Freshwater Drum

Freshwater drum have a humped back, a long sloping forehead, and a small chin barbel-free mouth set low and underslung, built for crushing shellfish and crayfish along the bottom. The body is silvery gray to bronze with no bold markings, and the lateral line is unusual for a freshwater fish because it runs all the way to the tip of the tail instead of stopping at the base.

New anglers often mistake a drum for a carp because both are thick-bodied, silvery, and bottom-feeding. Carp have a much larger mouth with two fleshy barbels on each side and no hump behind the head. Drum are sometimes confused with black or white bass too, but the deep humped back, rounded tail, and single long dorsal fin with a notch in the middle separate them right away. If you catch one and cut it open, the pair of large pea-sized ear bones (otoliths) in the skull are a dead giveaway, no other common freshwater fish has stones that big.

Big rivers, reservoirs, and large lakes across the Mississippi River drainage, the Great Lakes, and much of the Midwest and Mississippi Valley. Freshwater drum also turn up in reservoirs and rivers through the Plains and parts of the Southeast interior. They like slow current, sandy or gravel bottoms, and deeper holes below dams, wing dikes, and river channel edges.

They roam in schools and move with the seasons, working shallower flats and current breaks in warmer months and dropping into deeper water as it cools. You will often find them mixed in with catfish and other bottom feeders in the same stretches of river.

Freshwater drum feed mostly on the bottom, using strong pharyngeal teeth in their throat to crush shells. Snails, clams, crayfish, and other small mollusks and crustaceans make up a lot of their diet, along with insect larvae and small fish. That shell-crushing ability is also why they are sometimes called sheepshead.

A simple bottom rig is all you need: a sliding sinker, a swivel, and a hook baited with a nightcrawler, cut bait, or a chunk of shad. Fish it slow along river channel edges, below dam tailwaters, or over gravel and sand flats in a reservoir. Drum will also take a jig tipped with a soft plastic or a piece of nightcrawler bounced slowly along the bottom.

They bite year round but tend to school up and feed hard in current seams and eddies where food washes past. Once you find one, stay put. Drum move in groups, so a bite often turns into several fish in the same spot. They pull hard for their size and are good to eat if kept on ice quickly, though many anglers release them.