Early morning, York river, Sunday September 2nd. Greg and I headed out to hopefully catch more big mullet with cast nets, but the tide was against us. We had plenty of bait, but only a few of the big mullet we hoped would score some big flounder that day. But the tide was against us and we took the skiff back and jumped on the parker. We fished Back River reef after getting gas and hooked into a few nice flounder, close, but not keepers. Then we nailed a double, both hooking up with fish simultaneously and landed two keepers - perfect. We had lots of bites and a few snags, but not many takers. A few drifts later it happened...
I felt resistance, drop my rod tip and steadily pulled up slowly in founder hooking fashion, ready to drop the tip quickly if, it got off to put the bait back in front of the fish. Solid weight followed the boat in the drift a few feet as I reeled in slowly and then, the drag started screaming. I stopped reeling and kept steady pressure. The medium-light rod buckled in long screaming runs off and off for at least fifteen minutes. Greg and I were sure I had a shark on the big mullet - I felt the head shakes and everything, but the 50Lb fluorocarbon leader never broke - Finally i was surprised to see the huge head of this...
BIG OLE RED DRUM! 45 inches and my biggest fish by far, but the netting was stressful - he was almost twice the size of Greg's net, and I thought he was going overboard when he tried to heave it in the boat. Obviously he got him - I was flabbergasted. This is the biggest fish I have caught, and the biggest one pulled in on Greg's Parker. Greg is now ready to catch more mullet and target black and red drum after this haul.We fished some more around York spit light, looking for flounder (we each landed another one just a little under sized), and spade fish. We found no spade fish, but the juvenile black sea bass ate our our clams up! It didn't take long to go through a half dozen clams and realize all that was there were the sea bass, so we headed in. Awesome day!
