Kayak Sight Fishing Florida Black Drum (Day 1)

I took the July 4 holiday to spend two days sight fishing for black drum in the backwaters of Cedar Key. I was able to land five of these bruisers on frozen shrimp, with dozens of other opportunities. It's a pretty accessible and underutilized fishery opportunity, and it has a lot of the aspects that make hunting fun-being able to use your eyes and then stealthily approach "big" game-but also has the advantage of being able to release these hardy fish relatively healthily. So keep some frozen shrimp on board and if you see some big black/gray/white tails lolling around, try to land one at the tip of fish's nose. There's no quicker way to catch a giant inshore fish.

[@dianakesl1814]

A miserable fish to target. Full of worms inedible coarse meat. The small puppy drum are excellent to eat. Better than redfish I believe. If you've never caught many fish and you just want to catch a large fish, catch and release, go for it. They get huge. I was out at Lone Cabbage reef with a friend one day and saw all these fins. First thought they were sharks feeding. As we got closer you could hear them through the bottom of the boat just going off gonging. The were black drum spawning. (Russell)