Seeing redfish: Angler hooks colorful black drum
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Sonny Restivo was fishing with friends in marginal conditions Sunday in Schofield Bay when he hooked a giant fish with the colorations of a redfish from its gills to its tail but the head of a black drum. The fish ate fresh shrimp on the bottom. Restivo said muddy water produced mostly catfish and a couple of stingrays.
“When I hooked it, everybody was waiting to see a big stingray, but when the fish surfaced, and we saw the red back, we got excited because that was the biggest redfish we’d ever seen,” Restivo said. “It was like trying to pull up an anchor and if I wouldn’t have had 30-pound Power Pro (braided line) I never would have been able to get the fish up. It took 35 minutes on light tackle to get the fish to the boat.”
Once aboard, Restivo had questions about his catch. The fish had a reddish body and had spots like a redfish on its tail and three others along its body. But there was something about the fish’s head.
“When we got the fish back to the dock (Delta Marina) at Empire, a couple of charter skippers said it looked like a drum,” Restivo said. “The were barbells under the bottom lip, about a quarter-inch long, but they were there just like a (black) drum.”
When he took the fish to a Wildlife and Fisheries biologist Tuesday, he reported, “She said the fish’s color was very unique, but it was a drum. The biologists are aging the fish.”
The giant catch weighed out at 62 pounds even, which would put it seventh on the State Top 10 Fish Records List.
If it were a redfish, Restivo’s catch would have been a state record.
Still, Restivo, who was fishing with his dad Angelo and friends Chuck Brewer and Ryan Rosenberger, said he will settle for his catch tying for the seventh spot in black drum.
