Not So Much a Puppy Drum

I fished this morning with Bryan Syme and his son Nicholas, getting out on the water to enjoy a birthday weekend for Bryan. We met down at the City marina early and headed up the river to fish the last two hours of an incoming tide. The tide charts called for a flood this morning so we were armed with topwater lures, float rigs, and weedless spoons for the marsh grass. The anglers started off tossing live shrimp under floats and a topwater but we had no hits on the outside of Tiger Island. We moved on around and fished a large creek outlet and here both anglers got some action. Nicholas

started it off when he landed a hungry Seatrout and Bryan followed that off with one of his on. Nicholas put another in the boat then Brian tangled with a high flying Ladyfish. When then checked some flooded marsh grass and even though there were a couple of areas that had enough water, most did not.  So we made a run over to Lanceford Creek, fished a flooded grass patch as the tide started out, then ended up at some docks where we had a flurry of bites. Nicholas caught a nice feisty Redfish and Bryan landed a couple of Seatrout. Then Nicholas had a huge bite but this big fish headed straight for the pilings and broke itself off. We converted one of the float rigs which has a 15# test braid and added a heavier 17# fluorocarbon leader and just a few casts later, FISH ON!  Nicholas kept the pressure on as I moved the boat out and away from the pilings. He played the big fish patiently and after a good battle we saw that it was a large Black "puppy" Drum!  But the big fish was a fighter and continued to dive deep. Nicholas was up for the match and eventually won out, landing the  25" 7lb Drum. Boy what a fish! We fished for just a short while longer then called it a day, another great one to be fishing Amelia Island waters!