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Red Drum Fishing in Oriental

Friday, September 12, 2008

My freind Randy (owner of NCAngler.com) and I had the opportunity to spend a few days in Oriental fishing on the Nuese river for old red drum. We met up there on Tuesday afternoon.

I knew before I left that it would be a good trip cause the day did not start out well. I figured the fish had conspired to keep us off the water. I noticed both of my trailer tires were a little low on air so I went to remove the cap and fill them. As soon as I twisted the cap the metal part of the stem came flying out and the tire went flat as a pancake. Same thing on the other side. I couldn’t remove the lugs because of rust, so I had to go borrow an impact wrench and compressor to get them off. Then I had jack problems and had to borrow another jack. After 3 hours, I finally got the tires fix and was on my way.

Randy and I met up there around 4:30 and launched the boat. I had stopped at Dave’s (Minnesott Bait & Tackle) to pick up some bait and get the latest fishing report. Soon we were at our desired spot and had our baits and chum out. Not too long latter and the storm clouds started appearing. When the lightening and clouds headed our way we left and pulled out of the water. Day 1 - fish 1, us nothing.

On the second day we got fresh bait and headed out about 4:30 and set-up on a spot near where we had been the day before. We were there an hour or so before when we finally got a bite and then after a brief but thrilling fight I boated our first Red drum, a nice 38” fish. Not to be out done, a hour or so latter Randy boated a beautiful 48” drum! That turned out to be the largest of the trip. A little latter I boated another fish, this one was 40 inches. We waited another hour without a bite and decided to call it a night. Three fish today, not bad - in fact we were quite happy!

We originally planned to leave on the morning of the third day but decided to stay another night after we got washed out the first night. I’m glad we did. Once again we got some fresh striped mullet. There was someone already on the spot we had occupied the night before so we went up river a 1000 yards or so, located the drop-off and set up there. Soon we had our first fish in the boat, my personal best at 46 inches. We caught four more big drum in the next 2 hours and finally called it quits at dark. Five fish today, eight for the trip!

What a great trip - good fishing, catching and fellowship! Cudo’s to Randy for picking the “spot” and for his wonderful hospitality (we stayed at his family’s vacation house on the river).