If there’s one kind of fishing that stands out in Capt. Bryan Cuevas’ mind this time of year it’s targeting big black drum on the bottom and around pilings.
Although he hasn’t figured out exactly why black drum turn on during the summer, Cuevas said it’s something he’s seen year after year since he was a kid.
“[The black drum bite] is usually the hot bite of the month in July,” Cuevas said. “For whatever reason, those fish turn on, and you can catch them up to 50 or 60 pounds.”
Cuevas said he typically fishes black drum with live or dead shrimp, but he’s discovered that they usually seem to take dead shrimp better. He believes their preference for dead shrimp has something to do with them being able to smell them better because of the extra odor they put off.
“And you know drum like to eat crab,” Cuevas said. “The monster 50- and 60-pound black drum — you want to use blue crab as bait.
Rigging up crabs is pretty straight forward.
“Make sure they’re legal size, cut them in half with their eyes looking at you, and then cut those halves into two pieces,” Cuevas said. “Hook one of those quarters on a Carolina rig and hang on.”
When fishing big black drum with cracked crab, it’s important to not set the hook too soon when you feel a bite. In fact, Cuevas tells his anglers to allow the fish to pull their rods down to parallel before pulling back.
The reason is simple: First they grab the bait, and then they crush it before swallowing it. If you set the hook when you first feel the bite, you’ll pull your hook right out of the fish’s mouth.
And even though he doesn’t practice this, Cuevas said a long-standing method of attracting black drum has been to scrape barnacles off the pilings, piers and bridge structures. This puts smell and bait in the water, and it acts as a chum for black drum.
“They have been working on keeping people from doing this, but we haven’t been able to get a definitive word [from the Department of Natural Resources] as to whether it will be legal as of July 1,” Cuevas said. “People do this a lot. They straighten the end of a hoe, and go up there and scrape the barnacles right off.”
Go to www.MS-Sportsman.com or www.dmr.ms.gov/ to find the current fishing regulations.
However you decide to fish them, there’s no doubt that Biloxi’s Back Bay is the place to be for black drum fishing during the heat of a South Mississippi summer.