24 september 2021
WBM
The fishermen were quite
popular and many angler
friends, in hopes of similar
luck, would press the group
for vital information. Typical
of successful drum fishermen,
the responses, if any, were
few and seriously inaccurate.
ALLISON POTTER
“WE CAMPED AND FISHED on the north end of
Hutaff Island every spring on the full moon in May,” Merritt
says. “The big drum were skittish, and if you made noise
with a boat or anchor chain, they would leave the slough and
you’d never see them again. So we were quiet, and slipped in
there usually by moonlight and fished the falling tide. The
average fish was 44 to 50 pounds.”
Kit Taylor, another veteran drum fisherman, recalls
many trips to Hutaff. He scoured the islands for drum and
often fished at night. While camping and fishing at night
at Elmore’s Inlet on a fishing trip in 1972, Taylor landed a
54.5-pound drum, a New Hanover Fishing Club record and
the largest caught on a rod and reel during the club’s history.
“From our base camp in a wooded grove on the island’s
north end, we fished the surf usually at night or at dawn on
falling tide. That’s when fishing was best,” Taylor says. “The
gear was usually a large, 9-foot Harnell rod with a Penn
Squidder reel loaded with 30-pound monofilament and cut
mullet for bait. Sometimes we used a Mitchell 302 spinning
reel and a lure, but the majority of the time we used mullet
as bait. We always fished the sloughs, which could be right
there at the inlet or hundreds of yards south. You just had
to find them. We looked for water 12 to 16 feet. There was
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