Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.

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Bill Cochran's Outdoors

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• Hunters and anglers still in the conservation business
• Drum fishing on Virginia’s Coast comes in two colors
• Elk advocate finally gets his day
• Turkeys are plentiful, so why are hunting regulations so tight fisted?
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The sun had just popped out of the Atlantic and in the distance the lighthouse on Smith Island appeared to be little more than a thick, stubby pencil stuck in the sand.

“When we get even with the lighthouse, we will be there,” said Calude Bain, more for encouragement than fact. The “there” that Bain referred to was the spot where Kevin Crum and a companion landed four red drum -- call them channel bass if you wish -- a couple days earlier.

Bain, Crum, my son, Preston, and I had anchored a pair of shallow-water aluminum boats on the Chesapeake Bay side of Smith Island and were toting a heavy load of surf rods, terminal tackle, sand spikes, bait, waders, jackets and snacks across the wet sand of the ocean side. Bain had warned that it would be a long walk. It was.

To the casual angler, the edge of the sea, as it rolls and hisses onto the sand, looks pretty much the same as far as the eye can see. But experienced surf fishermen observe something entirely different. The behavior of the waves tells them what is beneath the surface, where the sandbars rise and fall away creating currents and gullies that anglers call a slough. This is where big red drum forage. This is where you want to toss your peeler crab or menhaden bait. This is big game country.

Smith Island is one of a series of barrier islands stretching for more than 80 miles along the seaside of Virginian’s Eastern Shore. The islands are wild and unspoiled for the most part: no cottages, no 4-wheel drives, no miniature golf, no fast-food shops. People are rare here, too, except for an occasional band of surf casters.

Come May and June, and again in the autumn, red drum feed along the islands, foraging for the menhaden and other food that funnel along the sloughs. The copper-hued fish are big and beautiful, children of the water wilderness. They can reach 50 pounds and 50 years of age. Catching one sets you apart as an angler.

Crum, who lives in Virginia Beach, was set apart 13 years ago while fishing Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, one of the world’s premier drum locations. On his first attempt, he arrived wearing fire-station surplus boots and a rod and reel his grandfather purchased at a yard sale. He caught a drum.

“Boy! This is easy,” I thought. “It took me three years to get another one.”

The Outer Banks of North Carolina is famous for its drum blitzes, when scores of big fish crash the surf to bow the rods of anglers, especially those surf casting at night at Cape Point. The fishing can attract mobs of four-wheel drive anglers who stand like pickets on a fence as the sea surges toward them.

As great as the Outer Banks drum fishery is, Crum is confident that the barrier islands of Virginia are superior. That’s where he has been fishing since 2002.

“You can catch more here in a season than 10 years of fishing the Outer Banks,” he said.

On a mid-May outing last season, Crum and three companions hooked 24 drum, all of them 40 inches or better. “We had four on at a time.”

You’d think such stories would draw mobs of fishermen to the islands, but that’s not the case. I don’t see any more fishermen now than I did 30-some years ago when I first fished them. Access is the reason. Most of the islands are challenging to reach, requiring the careful maneuvering of a boat along narrow, twisting, often shallow channels. Once you reach them, getting to a productive slough can involve a long walk while bearing a heavy load of equipment.

That’s part of the allure for Crum. He savors the planning, the logistics, the work, the involvement. These earn him a one-on-one encounter with a drum hip-deep in its own environment, well away from the crowds, where the tide and the waves pull at his body and the sand erodes beneath his feet. He likes other fishing, too. He is tournament director of the Striped Bass World Championship headquarters in Virginia Beach. But drum are special.

Bain feels the same way. As director of the Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament, he had opportunities to pursue many species in a variety of methods and locations. But surfcasting is a favorite. It returns him to his roots. He was born into a family that did not fish or own a boat, so he went to angling school where the sea meets the sand in constant combat.

As we marched across the sand, Bain was on the way to another successful drum outing. He and his companions had landed drum the previous four trips, catching a total of 15 of the prestigious fish. That kind of consistency is unheard of, except for the barrier islands, he said.

This was to be a slow day, with stingrays and sharks pestering our baits. Bain tended one rod, thinking it was more trash, but then the expression on his face changed.

“This might be it!” he said.

The fish rolled to the surface, slapping its broad, black-spotted tail in the frothing water.

“This is it!” Bain said.

In time, he and Crum had the drum in their hands, working quickly and gently to release it. Radiating from its sea-splashed, bronze body were the purple, silver, pink and blue colors that reflect the sunrise on rippled water.

The barrier islands had done it again.