This hulking 50-pounder grabbed a dead menhaden bait. Black drum supposedly only feed on crabs and other shellfish.

I've walked through the expectant crowd in February, with 50 heavy rods lining every inch of plank and rail during the drum run. Big blue crabs, the favorite bait, were hacked in half with rusty old butcher knives, threaded onto large hooks and hurled far out into the moving tide.

Action was slow that day, but you could tell many of these folks had hooked into big drum before. The crowd had a family-gone-fishing air about them, with kids playing nearby, but you could tell when the action began, these people were ready for battle.

Actually, their tackle was a bit heavy for black drum, though somewhat necessary in such crowded conditions. The rods were long and the reels of 3/0 or 4/0 caliber. Black drum bigger than 30 inches were protected beginning in the early 1990s, and the black drum rodeos around Galveston Bay, held mostly for shore-bound anglers, were ended. Still, people like to tussle with a big fish, even to release them. These bigger drum are no good to eat anyway. They're full of parasites, and the meat is tough. So, the crowd today, if they plan on eating fresh fish, hopes to land a drum small enough to keep.

The author surfaces with a drum speared in 30 feet of water.

Since I've been encumbered with a boat of some sort for a long time, my drum have usually been caught while I was bobbing around at the jetties or even offshore. We caught them in a variety of places, and at times when you wouldn't even expect one to be around. Perhaps the strangest catch was a hulking 50-pounder, caught in summer on dead menhaden (shad) while tarpon fishing. Black drum supposedly only feed on various shellfish. They love crabs, shrimp, oysters, clams and such, but dead fish? That's rare, very rare.

I generally targeted black drum in February/March by rounding up the critical ingredients, a dozen blue crabs. How? Since there were crab traps washed up all over the Texas bay shorelines, I walked the beaches until I'd found a few that were not too beat up or filled with sand. (Found a lot of duck decoys, too).  I placed a frozen redfish head in each trap for bait, since crabs are voracious and can clean a trap of softer material. The heads lasted at least a few days, even in April when the crabs were hungry.

The traps were dropped in some salty bayou off the main bay,  where they were protected from high winds from each infernal cold front. (High waves will move the traps, even drag them away.)

Drum fishing is easy -- when the rod bends over double, the fish is hooked.

It's easy fishing -- when the rod bends over double, the drum is hooked. We usually managed to catch and release four or five drum in a couple of hours with the tide coming in. The only surprise fish we ever caught there was a sheepshead. We'd lucked into a big softshell blue crab, and figured a drum would love that. Instead, a big sheepshead, weighing 10 pounds, 10 ounces, ate the entire crab. It struck the one rod we'd set out with lighter tackle and swallowed the 4/0 hook.

Having spent a lot of time diving over the years, I've had the opportunity to observe black drum underwater. This was usually during summer, offshore at the production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, where the water is clear enough to see.

In 30 or 40 feet of water, one could usually find a scattering of drum moving around slowly inside the platform. Occasionally we caught them while jigging for snapper or bluefish. Sometimes I would spear one or two of them, along with a mess of sheepshead. One day while snorkeling I dove down and speared a 30-pounder with the pole spear -- for reasons that escape me now. It was quite a struggle on one breath of air. I never saw a real school of drum underwater, except off Louisiana, which was a shock.

This Sabine Pass drum hit a gold spoon meant for a seatrout.

Drum are usually appreciated by most fishermen, but not all. In Florida, clam farmers raise their product in tough 100-pound mesh sacks left offshore in four feet of water. The clams get fat and never leave the sack, feeding by simply filtering water all day. The clams are favored by big stingrays and black drum, who suck a corner of the bag into their mouth and grind the clams into pulp with their pharnageal teeth (located in their throats). The pulped clam parts drift through the mesh bag and are swallowed. Angry farmers have found their bags almost emptied. Black drum presumed to be the culprits have been found dead, either floating or on the beach.

And so it goes.

Joe Richard is a Gainesville, Florida, writer and photographer who owns Seafavorites.com, a stock photo web site of outdoor photography.