Black and Blue

Sitting at my desk Monday morning, I noticed a tender spot near my hip. It turned out to be a bruise left by the butt of my surf rod after fighting a barrage of big bluefish this past Saturday. Though that wasn’t exactly what I’d meant, I had left for southern New Jersey on Thursday night hoping to get black and blue—or rather, black drum and bluefish.

The black drum started trickling into Delaware Bay a couple weeks ago, but cold Northeast winds and plummeting water temperatures put the bite on hold for a few days. Fortunately, conditions had improved in time for my Friday the 13^th trip with my Dad, and my good friends Jerry Sullivan the elder, and Jerry Sullivan the younger.

Jerry the younger had booked a trip with Captain Dale Sutton of the No Sweat, and invited my dad and I along. Though I’d drum fished once before, I’d never caught one, nor seen one caught, and five hours into the trip, it was looking like that might remain unchanged.

We’d read no drum on the sounder, and seen none caught by the boats around us. Skates, spotted hake, and dogfish picked away at our baits, while intermittent downpours further drenched our spirits.

As the sun started getting low, a boat anchored nearby hooked six drum over 20 minutes. Dale pulled the anchor and adjusted our position. We hadn’t moved far, but within minutes of re-setting, we began hearing the drum below the boat. The booming sound created by the drums’ modified air bladders reverberated through the hull. A few minutes later, I was fighting my first ever black drum.

The boat would land five more drum, all in the 40- to 74-pound range—except mine. Mine was a pipsqueak mixed in with the monsters, weighing no more than 8 pounds. Nevertheless, the trip was a success, and we all went home covered in drum slime with a bag of fillets.

On Saturday, I arrived at Island Beach State Park a little after 1. The beach was crowded with sunbathers and fishermen. No one seemed to be catching, but another angler had assured me it had been good in the morning, around low tide, when fishermen could safely reach the sandbars and cast into deeper water. Give it some time, he advised. As the tide rose, the bluefish would move in over the bars, and the bite would pick back up—and it did.

OTW contributor and photographer, Tom Lynch, joined me, and for a few hours we caught bluefish after bluefish on poppers until a building storm sent us home.