The black drum is a chunky, high-backed fish with many barbels or whiskers under the lower jaw. Younger fish have four or five dark vertical bars on their sides but these disappear with age. The bellies of older fish are white but coloration of backs and sides can vary greatly. Fish from Gulf waters frequently lack color and are light gray or silvery. Those living in muddy bay waters have dark gray or bronze-colored backs and sides. Some are solid silvery gray or jet black. A length of six inches is reached in the first year, 12 inches the second and 16 inches the third. Increases of about two inches per year occur after that. The largest black drum on record weighed 146 pounds. The Texas record taken by a sport angler is 78 pounds but most bull drum caught weigh 30 to 40 pounds.

This fish is a member of the croaker family and is related to the Atlantic croaker, red drum, and spotted seatrout. A characteristic of this family of fish is the ability to produce croaking or drumming sounds with the air bladder, which is the reason for the common names croaker and drum. This ability is most developed in the black drum and anglers can sometime hear sounds from schools passing near their boats.

"Black drum are closely related to redfish," "They have a shorter and deeper body with more of an arched back, and they prefer to eat shellfish like shrimp and clams even more than redfish. Juvenile black drum have four to six vertical black stripes on them so some people mix them up with sheepshead. They lose the stripes when they get large."

Black drum hang around bridges, docks, piers, jetties, and anywhere shellfish congregate. They are caught almost exclusively with cut shrimp or similar shellfish baits on the bottom. They don't prefer fish but every once in awhile a hungry black drum will hit a live minnow or a bit of cut mullet meant for something else.