Red Drum Or Fish fisherman of Fairfield, Trading House Creek Calaveras, and Victor Braunig.

Did you realize these Redfish were raised and stocked for us as a result of CCA programs of years past. The CCA helped research the spawning techniques and then funded hatchery facilities to raise those frye to the fingerling size TPWD stocks into our respective lakes.

I cannot express how appreciative I am for the reds I can catch at my favorite lake. I joined my local CCA chapter last year and know my membership went to the admirable conservation and preservation efforts, not to mention knowledge I have gained from their periodic publications. Those publications educate we fisherman. This year their Tide publication has shown me CCA helped fund and published scientific quality proof that a certain hook shape caught twice as many reds as two other commonly used shapes. This particular shape also gut hooked 15"-27" reds half as many times as the offset of the same shape and 25% of the J hook shape that is most commonly found in tackle boxes.

This time of the year the various inland chapters have membership and/or funding drives. Can you afford not to continue their funding of red fish programs in our behalf with a $25 membership or a $40 banquet attendance?

For those of us in North Texas there are 3 or 4 chapters. The southern most nearest the Fairfield and Trading House Creek lakes is the Four Corners, who havs a BBQ banquet next Thursday Mrch 5 at 6 PM in the Midlothian convention center south of US Hwy 287. Directions

Here is a link to other chapters:
Fort Worth

Dallas

Tyler-Longview

San Antonio

All others

Click here is a link to a CCA website where you can find the chapter nearest you.

Nice article on the hooks. I use offset circles for reds but I'll switch to the non-offset circle hooks now.

I'am very grateful for Redfish to be stocked locally to me, my better fishing stories almost always have a redfish in it. I dearly respect the fish and it's hard throwing them back cause I just want to hold it and look at it lol.

Very interesting article on the hooks, Don. My Thanks for posting it.

I was into CCA years ago while living on the Coast and watched the redfish population rise to levels I hadn't seen in 30 years.

Didn't know they had an East Texas chapter...so thanks for posting. I'll check it out.

Woodlands chapter as well

I am actually headed to Lake Fairfield for Spring Break. I have fished for Reds in saltwater but never on this lake. Any advise on technique and/or bait would be greatly appreciated.

look through my posts of the last 6 months there are plenty of suggestions posted.

look through my posts of the last 6 months there are plenty of suggestions posted.

Tonight at 6 PM is the CCA Four Corners chapter banquet, a link for directions is below, here is more reasoning for reds fisherman to join the CCA, quoted from here

"In the late 1960s, a few anglers were becoming extremely concerned with the commercial decimation of their beloved redfish and began to make trips to Austin to try to convince the legislature to take action. Their voice went unheard, and the devastation continued until the mid-1970s, when a group of about 40 anglers led by Walter Fondren gathered to form the GCCA (Gulf Coast Conservation Association). The GCCA began the long hard fight under the war cry �Save the Redfish,� and in 1977, at the urging of the GCCA and other concerned Texas sportsmen, the Red Drum Conservation Act was passed by the Texas legislature and made into law.

This, however, was only the first of many victories. In 1980 the GCCA led the fight to have single-strand monofilament gill nets outlawed in Texas waters and in 1981 helped obtain game fish status for both the redfish and speckled trout. But, while the GCCA fought the battle to keep the redfish in the bay safe, the numbers of redfish coming back into the bay from the spawning grounds was being reduced drastically, again by commercial over-harvest.

The blackened redfish craze had started in Louisiana, and the demand for red drum fillets soared. The large schools of spawning red drum off the coast of Texas and Louisiana became the target, and the large commercial purse-seining boats began to annihilate the brood stock that put new fingerlings back into the bays. The GCCA had a new fight on its hands and in 1986 won the battle that ended the commercial harvest of adult redfish in the federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The 1980s also brought several more devastating blows to the redfish population that went way beyond the control of the GCCA or the lawmakers in Austin. In December of 1983 and again in February and December of 1989 the jet stream dipped below Brownsville and deep into the Gulf of Mexico, allowing severe arctic fronts to make it to the Texas Coast. These fronts, which dropped the mercury into the teens and single digits, took a dramatic toll, killing millions of redfish and other species along the entire Texas Coast. These blows dealt by Mother Nature combined with the pressures of commercial over-harvest prompted the GCCA and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to form a unique partnership in the development of several fish hatcheries to help replenish the red drum stocks in our bays.

Since its beginnings, the GCCA, now known as CCA, has been fighting for the redfish and other coastal resources. It has fought and won many battles to ensure the future of redfishing in Texas. And, while it would be a pretty safe argument that Walter Fondren and the group of anglers that he led could be, or even should be, considered the saviors of the redfish, they are also somewhat responsible for turning redfishing into what it is today � an industry that pumps millions of dollars into the Texas economy every year.

Throughout the late �80s and �90s, as fishing improved along the Texas Coast, so did the economy, and more and more people purchased boats and flocked to the coast to try to catch a redfish or speckled trout. In addition, boats were becoming better and more efficient, allowing anglers to venture farther away from the ramps and into the extreme shallows."

I can't get any of those links to work.
I will try to pull em up on the www

I am confused. is this freshwater drums or saltwater drums? pardon my ignorance.

I got a freshwater red drum at Falcon lake, near Mexico, about 15 years ago.

I am notoriously the guy on the boat that catches the odd fish. or turtle. or random piece of junk at the bottom of the lake. thats me.

when I pulled out a Gasper Goo, thought to be long extinct out of the lake, we were all shocked. Never seen one since.

Looks like they moved things around. Here is the link to their general chapter address page

Their website is slow so be patient as long as your loading progress bar is moving.

Gasper goo is a freshwater drum/sheepshead, not a red drum...Red drum/Redfish are a saltwater species that have been stocked in a select few hotwater freshwater lakes and are doing very well...