www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com 25
WBM
From left, Jim Edens, Kit Taylor, Rudy Wallace, Larry Ely, J.W. Johnson and race car driver Buddy Baker reeled in massive red drum at Hutaff
Island circa 1973.
COURTESY OF KIT TAYLOR
no set area — just wherever the sloughs
were deep and there were rips and bottom
structure.”
In an article on drum fishing, the late
George Canady, a respected veteran fish-erman
who frequented the island, wrote
in the 1951 New Hanover Fishing Club
Annual, “You will find fishing best on the
last of the low tide, slack, and the first few
minutes of the rising tide, late afternoon
and better yet at night around the inlets as
they come in from the ocean feeding.”
Occasionally, one of the crew received
a call from their friend Hall Watters after
an aerial view from Watter’s spotter plane
showed a school of red drum off the island.
Watters was a pilot for the Southport
menhaden fleet, but being an active drum
fisherman, he kept a sharp eye along the
coast for the big fish. Weather permitting,
he would often land his plane on the strand
and commence fishing. Watters is credited
with first catching big drum on a surf plug
known as the Porter Pirate “62”, a wooden,
cigar-shaped lure that could easily be cast
long distance.
“Hall Watters was interested in more
than just catching fish,” Taylor says. “He
was a collector of drum lures and tackle
and an expert in surf fishing. He really
knew all aspects of red drum fishing —
the tackle, the tides, and the sloughs. He
knew what red drum liked and he matched
tackle to the target.”
The men routinely landed 40- to
50-pound drum, the photos of which
appeared in the New Hanover Fishing
Club Magazine of that era. The fisher-men
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.
A typical spring camping and fishing
trip might happen like this. After a few
hours of sleep, tucked back into the dunes
in warm sleeping bags, two fishermen, who
had arrived during the night, stirred in
the cool, gray light of dawn. Pale embers
from their evening campfire glowed in the
morning mist.
A smoky red sun rose slowly from the
depths of the sea as doves, wrens and
larks began to call from the forest nearby.
Raucous terns, skimmers and oyster-catchers
worked the shoreline. Marsh
hens clucked and squawked. A squadron
of tundra swans flew over high, their eerie
calls echoing down the strand.