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BUXTON, N.C. — They call it combat fishing.
When the hard-fighting red drum feed offshore from the Outer Banks, devoted anglers daily line up shoulder to shoulder on the Hatteras Island shoreline to cast lines into the surf.
They cast their lines and shift positions as their bait and hook drift with the wind and currents. If they snag a big red drum, they swap spots, shuffling sideways, forward and backwards, yanking rods up and over or dipping below each other to avoid tangling lines.
There’s coordination and cooperation. And there’s cussing and some shoving.
“We call it combat fishing,” Bryan Lester, lifelong fisherman and owner of Hatteras Style Custom Rods and Tackle in Buxton. “We can go out there and catch one drum after another after another.”
The fisherman congregate at Cape Point. It juts into the ocean like a big chin. Two currents, one from the north and one from the south, converge just off the coast and bring with them a large mix of different species.
The currents constantly alter the size of the point. In recent years, it has shrunk from more than 60 acres to about 20 acres. Buffers placed by park rangers around shorebird and sea turtle nesting area can reduce the area for fishing even more.
Anglers head onto the beach with their four-wheel drive trucks brimming with fishing rods and coolers and chairs. The point turns into a parking lot. The inexperienced may not know where to start.
“Cape Point can be very intimidating,” Lester said.
If the crowds are too much, the beaches at Hatteras Village and on Ocracoke also are popular red drum spots, he said.
When red drum feed here in the spring and fall, social media fills with photos of men, women and children hefting the large fish in their arms for a photograph. Local tackle shops posts photos and praise the anglers.
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There’s even a store called Red Drum Tackle Shop in Buxton near Cape Point, in business for 46 years.
“I’ve been on vacation all my adult life,” owner Bob Eakes said of fishing on the Outer Banks and working in the shop.
Sometimes sharks mix with the red drums. Snagged sharks run hard in both directions, tangling lines. On top of that, they sometimes do it late at night, when some of the best fishing happens.
“You talk about mayhem,” said Al Adam, an Outer Banks surf fisherman since the 1970s.
It takes experience, particularly with anglers communicating, he said. The fishing line should go over everybody else if the fish is far out. If it’s close to shore, the angler takes his rod and line under the others.
“It takes experience and feel,” he said.
Fishing for red drum along the Outer Banks is “legendary,” according to a description of the species by the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries.
Red drum is North Carolina’s saltwater state fish. The world record for the species was caught in 1984 by a man surf casting from the beach in Avon, a few miles north of Cape Point. It weighed 94 pounds and 2 ounces.
During the summer, the fish swim north or to the inland sounds to spawn.
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Red drum can live 60 years and grow to 5 feet long, according to North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. They’re also known as channel bass, redfish and puppy drum.
Red drum are named for their coppery color on the back and upper sides and for the drum-like sound the male makes when they vibrate a muscle in their bladder. It sounds like a belch, Lester said.
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To catch the larger ones, he recommends a rod about 12 to 13 feet long, an 8-ounce pyramid-shaped lead weight and a large circle hook with a fish head or chunk of fish belly for bait. A southwest wind is preferable with a water temperature of about 60 degrees.
Lester keeps two rods at the ready across the front counter in his tackle store. They’re on display and at the same time handy to grab and go fishing, he said.
Some experienced anglers, including Lester catch and release more than 100 red drum — 40 inches or longer — in one year. The North Carolina catch and keep limit is one red drum per day per person, with a length of 18 to 27 inches.
An aerial view posted in February on Facebook showed a thick school of red drum off Hatteras Island about 3 miles long and a half mile wide, Lester said.
When they come in groups that large, the surface is disturbed in a way that makes the water look “nervous,” anglers say.
“The population of red drum is out of this world here,” Lester said.
Jeff Hampton, 757-446-2090, jeff.hampton@pilotonline.com