But huge red drum aren't the ones that most fishermen are targeting these days. With regulations that require release of all fish more than 27 inches long, it's strictly a catch-and-release fishery. Actually, with a daily creel limit of one fish between 18 and 27 inches, the entire recreational fishery is basically a catch-and-release fishery.

But most red drum aren't caught to be kept; they're caught for the excitement of the battle, for the singing of a reel's drag when an 8-pound "puppy drum" takes off with a little spoon, a piece of plastic or a live finger mullet and you're fishing with 10-pound-test line.

Red drum are recovering from some population numbers that gave biologists concern in the late 1990s. They aren't back to full strength yet, despite indications the past several years of excellent populations.

Here again, however, last year's cold snap may play a role in the success that fishermen have this year.

"Red drum fishing should be pretty good," said Paramore. "But we (didn't see) a whole lot of 12- to 14-inch drum. I think a lot of them might have gotten hurt in that cold snap. We're not seeing a lot of the smaller ones - the ones that will be 18 inches this summer when you catch 'em.

"We've got good indications from down south, around Wilmington, but there haven't been many fish in the Pamlico Sound."

Red drum spawn in the fall, so fish that were spawned in the fall of 2002 should have shown up in last summer's netting surveys at around 12 to 14 inches long. Those are the ones that were missing in 2003.

"Any given year, the fish spawned in the fall will be 16- to 20-inch fish when you catch 'em the next fall," Paramore said. "They grow pretty fast - about an inch per month. By the time they're 18 months old, they're usually around 18 inches long. The variability in recruitment strings is why you see such fluctuations in the abundance of puppy drum. If you have an off year, everybody wonders where the drum went.

"What I would expect is that the fishing will be average or better, but a little bit below average on the low end of the slot. It's not an overfishing problem, but just as speckled trout are vulnerable to cold weather, red drum are also, but to a lesser extent, and it's usually just the young-of-the-year that are affected."

Paramore said that surveys indicate excellent populations of fish between 3 and 7 years old, those fish that are between 20 and 30 inches and drive the fishery in North Carolina. "We've had good year-classes come through ever since the 1996 year-class. We had some really awesome year-classes in '98, '99 and 2000.

"The good news is there were a lot of larger puppy drum and bigger ones up to adult size," Paramore said. "They were available in the ocean off Oregon Inlet all year, and there were big drum in the Pamlico Sound in the fall - that's been pretty consistent the past couple of years."

Paramore said that fishermen along North Carolina's southern coast, say, from Swansboro south, experienced one of their best years ever on puppy drum in 2003. "From everything I've heard, down south, those guys were seeing fish like they've never seen before, especially numbers. Those fish should be around again (this) year, and there will be a good number of puppy drum that recruit into the (18- to 27-inch) slot again this year," he said.

"There is some separation between groups of fish. From tagging data, we know that fish tagged north of Cape Lookout tend to stay north, including the Pamlico Sound, and fish south of Cape Lookout tend to stay there. We've tagged a lot of smaller fish south of Cape Lookout, fish that weren't adults. In the past, we just haven't seen that many big fish down there."

Paramore also said that distribution of puppy drum up and down the coast last year might have been pushed by the wet weather more than anything else. The southern end of the Pamlico Sound and the marshes around Beaufort and Harkers Island didn't have their usual tremendous numbers of puppy drum, and Waterson believes that last year's heavy rains changed the salinity of the waters inside sounds and bays enough to move entire groups of fish.

"All the rain we had seemed to mess things up in the Pamlico Sound; it certainly pushed the fish to the eastern side of the sound," he said. "We had salinity readings in Oregon Inlet last year that we usually see in the Albemarle Sound."

North Carolina has two distinct species of flounder in its waters, the "summer" flounder, which is most often caught in the ocean and around inlets, and the "southern" flounder, which is caught in less saline and more brackish waters - typically, sounds, the Intracoastal Waterway and coastal rivers and creeks.

The word from the DMF offices in Morehead City is that summer flounder are recovering after a long period of overfishing, but southern flounder are starting to show the wear and tear of fishing pressure.

"The Atlantic States Fisheries Management Council and Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council announced this year that the summer flounder stock is no longer overfished, and overfishing is not occurring," said Carter Waterson, the DMF fisheries biologist who oversees both species of flatfish. "They have no intentions of lifting the quota, but they will relax it as they find more fish out there. But we may not see creel and size limits change for a couple more years."

Fishermen who catch flounder in the ocean and around inlets are regulated by an eight-fish daily creel limit and a 15-inch size minimum. Flounder in other "inside" waters are regulated by 13- and 14-inch size minimums in different areas, but there is no daily creel limit.

"Our last stock assessment on southern flounder is that they are overfished, and we're working on a fishery management plan right now," Waterson said. "We hope it will be done by the end of 2004, and we'll probably have our first creel limits on flounder in 2005.

"Actually, the harvest is a good bit over what we'd like right now. The recruitment is not down; it's running about average - good years and bad years - but we're just overfishing them."

In addition, Waterson said, there was some winter kill of southern flounder last January between the Core Sound and Swansboro - certainly not the extent of the speckled trout kill, but certainly noticeable.

"The summer flounder can find deep water, and they can tolerate colder water - we're really at the southern end of their range," he said. "And (southern) flounder can tolerate cold water, but it was that sudden cold snap that got them."

Waterson expects recreational fishermen to have a daily creel limit on southern flounder in place in 2005, but it will be well into 2004, when the next stock assessment is finalized, before any decisions are made on what that limit will be and whether or not the size minimum will change.

Looking at a flounder and determining its species can be difficult, but Waterson said there's one quick visual test. A summer flounder will have about five oscillated spots on its back - spots of color with a lighter ring around them. Southern flounder are missing those spots.

"The thing fishermen need to realize is, if they plan on going into the ocean at all, they should go there first, then come back inside," he said. That way, fishermen aren't caught with smaller but legal southern flounder in areas where the size minimum on summer flounder is in effect.

"Based on the 2003 stock assessment, spawning stock biomass is above target and fishing mortality is below target."

In layman's terms, there are plenty of king mackerel and Spanish mackerel out there, and we're not catching nearly enough to be of concern to biologists like Randy Gregory, who tracks the two popular mackerel species for the NCDMF.

"We just had stock assessments, and both came back good," Gregory said. "The fish are not overfished, and the stocks are considered healthy. We don't expect any fluctuations in the population, at least in a downward trend, for the next year or so.

"We think everything will remain relatively the same. If the weather cooperates, we expect to see good numbers of Spanish and kings (in 2004)."

Gregory said that the DMF looks at mackerel landings over a longer period of time than other species, because factors out of the control of recreational and commercial fishermen often drive the annual harvest.

"Water currents and the weather have a whole lot to do with our landing of Spanish," he said. "And it's hard to tell what went on (in 2003), with that crazy weather we had."