Caught My First Red Drum

[Tuckahoe Joe]

Today I went out and picked up a 7-day saltwater liscense so I could go fishing for stripers with my dad. We were using cut up pieces of crab. Caught a couple small ones. My dad's were the biggest at 15 and 17 inches. Nothing amazing. I took a picture of mine anyway (my dad is technologically impaired so the pictures kinda blurry). But I also caught a red drum. My first one. Again not real big but I thought it was pretty cool. I know the stripers grow to a good size cuz when I was younger I caught some that were 28+ inches but I was curious how big the red drums go.

[Bluebasser86]

Cool, I'd love to catch a redfish and a striper. Never caught either that I can remember. I'm not sure how big reds get but I know surf fishermen catch them over 50lbs in some areas.

[SirSnookalot]

Redfish can grow to be over 90#, but probably average around 5 or 6, the Florida slot is 18-27". Much like snook and stripers, redfish can be caught in a variety of ways using bass type lures, nothing ever beats cut or live bait. A good way to fish for them, my preference to most kinds of fishing is sight casting, if you spot a ray, cast near them. Rays stir up the bottom, redfish love crustaceans (so do cobia), live shrimp rules.

[Crabcakes]

Did you actually catch that up at Chesterwood by Baltimore? That is by far the furthest I have ever heard of reds going up the Chesapeake.

There were many more small drum in the bay this year than usual. Lots around that size. I heard of most of them being caught from the Patuxent south.

Generally every year in MD the southern bay gets a very small run of large red drum that can push 50lbs. They push up the bay as the salinity increases and are usually found down in Tangier Sound and Pt. Lookout.

The world record drum is around 92 I believe but a regular big "bull red" or "old drum" is 25-50lbs with most red drum being much smaller like Sirsnook said.

In the Chesapeake you won't be doing any sight casting, fishing with cut peeler crab or shrimp on the bottom is your best bet. They occasionally hook one trout fishing with lures in Tangier Sound but that is quite a ways from where you are and the trout are pretty inconsistent there with the reds being even harder to find.

[Tuckahoe Joe]

Did you actually catch that up at Chesterwood by Baltimore?

Yeah man. Right off the fishing pier at Chesterwood Park on Peninsula Highway. I was kind of surprised too.

Thanks for the input everyone. I figured it was a small one. Would have been nice if it was one of those average 5 or 6 pounders.