THE RED DRUM. 
107 
Dr. C. J. Kenworthy, in the American Angler , gives an excellent 
description of the methods of fishing in Florida. 
“ This fish resembles in its habits its congener the striped bass of 
Northern waters. It is an excellent biter, and makes a noble fight for 
liberty. As a table fish, up to say ten pounds, it is an excellent one, but 
large specimens are rather coarse. The back of the fish is of a beautiful 
bronzed hue, shading off to a silvery lustre on the sides and belly. It has 
usually one or more black spots at the junction of the tail with the body, 
but these sometimes extend upwards for one third of the length of the fish. 
In a specimen I recently captured the spots numbered seventeen on one 
side and twenty-three on the other. It is a salt water fish, but is occa¬ 
sionally captured in fresh water; at times a long distance from the ocean, 
as in Crescent Lake and Lake George. In its habits it appears to differ 
in different localities. In the St. John’s River it frequents the deeper 
portion of the stream, with rock, shell or hard sandy bottom, but on the 
southwest coast it is generally captured in shoal water, on sand bars, edges 
of grassy flats and near points at inlets. In the northeasterly portion of 
the State the large fish put in an appearance in June and July, but the 
main run enter the St. John’s River in August and September, leaving for 
the sea in November. They visit the bays, estuaries, and rivers of the south¬ 
west coast in the fall and winter, and, from the best information I can 
obtain, school in June, and probably retire to the ocean. 
In the Halifax River, and the tributaries of the Indian River and on the 
southwest coast, they greedily take a spinner or fly, but in the St. John’s 
River these baits have proven a failure. In Lake George and Crescent 
Lake large fish have been captured with a spinner. At the mouth of the 
St. John’s River small specimens take shrimp, and the large fish, cut mullet 
bait, or the half of a hard-back crab. At the mouth of the river large fish 
prefer mullet to crab. But what is somewhat remarkable, in the autumn 
after a severe northeast gale they ascend the river to Jacksonville, twenty- 
five miles from its mouth, and will not look at cut mullet bait, and fisher¬ 
men are forced to tempt them with hard-back crabs. 
These fish vary in size in different streams. In the St. John’s River 
near its mouth, the summer and autumn run of fish range from eighteen to 
sixty pounds. The smallest specimen thus far captured by the writer 
weighed nineteen pounds. The usual average will be found to be about 
thirty-five pounds. My friend Mr. B., who is familiar with the fishing on 
the Halifax River, informed me that the largest specimen that he heard of 
being captured in that stream weighed thirty-five pounds ; and from the 
best information we have been able to secure, they seldom exceed this 
weight on the Indian River. We have captured many Bass on the south¬ 
west coast, but none to exceed thirty pounds in weight. Some years since 
one was caught on the Homosassa River with spinner and hand line 
weighing thirty-four pounds. Several years since a visitor at Homosassa 
