Black Drum Bite Is on in Lower Bay

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Byline: Gene Mueller, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

In the lower Chesapeake Bay, private and charter fishing boats are gathering around buoys 13, 16 and 36A to drop weighted bottom rigs into the water that have sea clam or crab baits pierced onto 7/0 hooks. The anglers are drawing strikes from broad-backed, roly-poly bottom feeders known as black drum - and they're getting them. Not only are the tasty drumfish taken in the Bay, but some of these heavyweights are eagerly sucking in bait offerings on the sea side of Virginia's lower Eastern Shore, especially in the Fisherman's Island inlet.

Virginia Beach super angler Ken Neill has been fishing around the Eastern Shore's barrier …