Summertime fishing for red drum means following the baitfish. Just as seatrout school and follow baitfish with the movement of the tides, so do the red drum. You won’t catch as many fish over 27 inches during the summer months inshore, because those fish have matured to breeding status and will be offshore doing their biological duties.
Fish up to fifteen pounds can be caught in the sounds and creeks that hold bait. They will move with the tide and can be caught on an outgoing tide.
Use the same quarter ounce jig heads with shrimp or mud minnows, casting up into the feeder creeks. Deeper channel fish can still be caught bottom fishing in the sounds, but most of the fish are following food into the creeks and rivers.
Live shrimp under a float will work well where you have a deep outside bend in a creek. As the drum move out with the tide, they stay in the deeper water because that is where most of the tidal flow occurs. Put the shrimp just off the bottom under the float, and let it drift with the tide. Expect some seatrout mixed in with drum when using with this method.
For artificial lures, try a swim tail grub on a jig head. Pinks and reds are the best colors, imitating shrimp. In shallow water, red drum will occasionally hit a top water plug, like a Dalton Special. Streamers are the ticket for taking drum on fly in these conditions. Just make sure you strip fast enough to keep the fly moving naturally with the tidal current.
Just about any creek going through any marsh area from Saint Marys to Savannah has the potential to hold fish. The key is finding the tidal flows that are carrying bait. The fish will be right behind and under the bait.
Summer is usually the time we experience more rain than any other time of year. Younger fish in the headwaters of the creeks are vulnerable to severe salinity changes, and heavy freshwater runoff from rain can hurt the population.
Red drum can truly be caught at any time of the year. They are relatively easy to catch, and we have lots of anglers fishing for them, more very year. If we are to continue to have replenishable stocks of red drum for future years, we must pay strict attention to the conservation efforts that the Georgia DNR Coastal Resources Division has put in place. The fact that these fish don’t reach breeding maturity until five years of age means that we must make sure we return to the water unharmed the majority of the smaller fish we catch.
According to John Pafford, Biologist in charge of inshore finfish research with the DNR Coastal Resources Division, over two million red drum have been harvested in Georgia waters over the past ten years by recreational anglers. Recent samplings of large red drum reflect the low numbers of juvenile fish that are reaching reproductive size. Most of the adults sampled were between twelve and twenty-five years of age. In fact, the ideal sampling would show most fish in the four to twelve year age bracket. The lack of fish in this lower bracket means that we may be harvesting too many fish before they reach breeding potential.
So, it’s up to us. While we have a tremendous red drum fishery and we prohibit harvest of breeder fish over twenty-seven inches in length, we need to be very careful with the smaller fish we catch. Take your five fish limit, and enjoy the catch and release resource. But be sure to carefully handle the smaller fish when you release them. And if it’s table fare you are after, consider practicing catch and release on the red drum while you keep the few seatrout and flounder that are always mixed in with them. It will help preserve the resource for future generations.
