A Keeper – Finally!

Published on Monday, November 12, 2012 by Katherine

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Months.  We have all tried for months to get that pie in the sky keeper puppy drum.  I cannot begin to tell you how hard it is to put a 17 ¾ inch drum back in the ocean.  It just isn’t the legal 18 inches.  So close.  OH SO CLOSE!

But the North Carolina game wardens don’t play games.  If you have a fish under the legal limit, you will be fined.  Hundreds.  Or you may even be taken to jail.  That ¼ inch is just not worth it!

Picture me, my mother and daughter on the beach Sunday, just as the sun began to set.  We were running out of light.  I had a two hour drive home ahead of me.  But it just seemed worth that “one last cast.”

And then I got the hit.  And I began to reel it in.  When I felt the weight and the fight I knew.  I just knew.  As the fish finally came in to view I was shocked.  I had two drum on one line.  TWO DRUM.  Did that mean both were probably under size?  Yes.  But it was TWO DRUM!

One of them appeared fairly long.  No.  It couldn’t be.  Or could it?  Is it 18 inches?  I measured once.  I measured twice.  I looked up at my mother questioningly and she said, “IT IS OVER 18 INCHES.”

I DID IT I DID IT I DID IT I DID IT!

Now, if you have a boat, you will laugh at my fish.  It is a SMALL PUPPY DRUM.  It is just above the lowest legal limit.  But I am not ashamed.  I am holding my head high and grinning ear to ear.  Because I know what people have been catching out there since I’ve been one of them for so long.  This, my friends, is a lovely little puppy drum.  He is the first legal size I’ve seen, and I’ll talk him!

*** There is something crazy weird about the puppy drum I caught.  CRAZY WEIRD.  I am saving that for tomorrow’s post.  Tomorrow I will reveal the truth about a great fisherman mystery.  DO come back.  The story is wild! ***