drum bite while crappie fishing

can anybody explain the massive drum bite on truman especially on the osage arm. I was catching some descent crappie on stump field then came back and all i could catch were drum. I mean a lot of drum in excess of 20 in one trip. Ive been fishing this lake a lot and this is the first year ive caught this many drum. There fun but sure not crappie and i believe they have pushed the crappie out. I was also trolling on the grand arm for white bass and caught a bunch of drum. Just wondering if anybody else has noticed

You might laugh, but I say keep em and eat them!! If you have eaten Redfish before they are from the same family I believe. Look it up and see what you think. I think drum get lumped into the same category as Gar because most people have just always heard for years they were junk fish.

Daddy always kept the drum, Momma always canned them, us kids always ate them , now I am big enough to say no to drum, but hey Drum follow crappie, and eat said young crappie, always have always will, once they school gets broken up the drum will move on and the crappie will re school and the cycle will start all over again, then the exception to the rule rears its head, not all crappie schools have drum following them, I suggest you fish that school, but not the school up by U highway bridge, they are mine.

I had the same problem with drum last spring but Hut never caught any. When I complained to him he just answered "I'm not fishing for drum"

If my bud measure em was in the boat you do not have to explain anything.

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Originally Posted by Bluesraider

You might laugh, but I say keep em and eat them!! If you have eaten Redfish before they are from the same family I believe. Look it up and see what you think. I think drum get lumped into the same category as Gar because most people have just always heard for years they were junk fish.

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Where I live we eat them all the time. Taste much like a white bass to me.

I aint eatin no drum, not with crappie in the freezer. Nothing wrong with taking em out of the lake and making fertilizer out of em!!!!!:biggrin

:crazy:All you have to do is fish for drum. Then if you have my luck you
won't catch anymore.

Clean em and throw em in with your crappie. Clean white meat you can't tell the difference.

I think before I eat a drum I will just get me a steak out of the freezer.

We eat drum all the time. There is nothing wrong with them. Just cut the red strip out That runs down the middle. I do,this on all fish that have that red line. The flesh reminds me of bass. They are not nasty and taste good. A lot of people here they are nasty and won't try them. Oh well if you don't like them then it is more for me. LOL

Last time we fished Truman we could not help but catching a lot of drum. There was no bait they would not hit. Jigs, blade baits, crank baits and even cut shad produced drum

Anyone saying they'd not eat drum wouldn't know the difference at a fish fry if 100% of the flesh cooked was drum over crappie. Hands down, it looks the same, taste the same, and if you fillet above the center line like white bass, it has NO red. FYI, if you were at spring camp and ate the fish I caught Saturday, it had two drum in it.

I like small drum. My buddy caught one about 15 pounds a few years that I tried to eat and it was like chewing on a tire. Flavor was still good, but had a very rubbery texture. Gar has one of the best flavors of any fish I have tried but are a royal PITA to clean. That's why I don't mess with them. I'm lazy and like those easy to clean fish. :fish

You have to put them on ice immediately. Then when you clean them just take the meat along the back above the ribs/lateral line. That will give you a nice hunk of boneless white meat. Cut it in strips about 2 fingers wide. Drop in boiling water until done and serve with shrimp sauce and lemon. Poor mans Shrimp Cocktail; Really good!

Taste like a good ole spoonie don't they Allstar1?:Rofl

I troll for walleye and crappie in tebo and osage arms,and have 3 other buddies that do the sa me thing and yes last year they were bad this year its way worse. I have fished Red Lake Lake Winnebago and green bay where drum are horrindus I hope its just pockets of drum and not a population explosion , up at red lake we feed them to the pelicans