Angler Catches Rare Red Drum on Cape Cod
On Thursday, August 15, Captain Sam Crafts of Take A Chance Charters in Harwich Port, MA, left the dock early in the morning with Camden Stride—a native Vermonter who booked his first-ever saltwater fishing trip in pursuit of a mighty bluefin. Compared to the placid lakes and ponds of the Green Mountain state, the tuna fishing grounds off Cape Cod are an overwhelmingly different world. Whether it be a bluefin, a striper, or even a scup, any fish that Stride caught on his trip to Cape would mark a successful introduction to saltwater fishing. The last thing anyone expected, though, was to hook and land a red drum, a species more common in southeastern waters, on Cape Cod.
“We started out looking for bluefin, but it was very busy and pretty slow out there, so we headed in around 2 p.m. to do some bass fishing,” said Captain Sam Crafts in an interview. “We hit Monomoy where the water was 65 degrees and the bite was slow out there too, but, eventually, we found a rip with some bass on it.”
Crafts maneuvered his 35-foot Duffy Downeast, the F/V Taken A Chance, toward the school and as they trolled through the rip, one of the rods went off. Stride picked it up to fight the fish, and Crafts, expecting to see a striped bass on the other end of the line, was baffled when a sizable red drum surfaced near the boat with their white, Rapala X-Rap Deep Diver in its mouth.
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“It was his first time fishing salt water, so Camden had no idea why I was freaking out at that moment,” Crafts chuckled. Every year in the Northeast, somebody is bound to catch a fish that’s just flat out lost at sea—whether it’s a barracuda near Montauk, a tarpon in Rhode Island, or a red drum on Cape Cod. And even though we’ve been conditioned as anglers to expect the unexpected, it’s still a surprise to see a red drum on the other end of your line anywhere north of New Jersey.
Crafts brought the fish aboard and snapped some photos of Stride and the drum, at which time the Vermonter decided to keep his prized catch. Red drum are prized table fare, and there are no recreational regulations for the rare catch in Massachusetts waters. The redfish record is vacant in Massachusetts, and according to the captain, Stride plans to register the fish with the state in hopes of claiming that state-record title.
The drum was measured at Goose Hummock Shops in Orleans where it taped out at 34 inches long, and the next morning, it weighed 12.65 pounds on a certified scale at Reds Best on the Chatham Fish Pier.
Although it is rare, this is not the first time a red drum has been caught on Cape Cod. Back in the summer of 2015, a shore-based scup fisherman in Buzzards Bay caught and released a 45-inch red that swiped a Berkley Gulp Shrimp after he ran out of squid.
Whether or not Stride’s 34-inch drum is certified as a Massachusetts state record, it’s hard to think of a better start to a career as a saltwater fisherman!
