Ridiculous Black Drum...

So in my endless attempt to become a better fisherman and learn the Tampa waters, I've been lurking on some fishing forums and trying to hunt down some people that know the area better than I do. I've been getting more in to "flipping" artificials under docks and I really like it. Just seems to be more productive working say 50 docks in an hour with a trolling motor as opposed to maybe 2 spots with live bait in a "hole."

So I found a guy (Kevin) who fishes the area a lot and said he could show me some really productive docks etc. We headed out yesterday (Sunday), picked up some live bait (as backup) and we decided to hit a couple docks I like to frequent first since they were close to the ramp. Kevin had about 5 missed hits but I pulled in a 24" Snook which was nice. We tried one more spot where we caught some small snapper and a HUGE Jack Crevalle but that was it so we headed towards north tampa (by the howard franklin bridge) to hit one of his spots.

On the way over... we saw a group of about 4 boats fishing in the middle of the main channel about 500yds from the main bridge opening (that I had to go through). They were fishing "something" but I had to run through them to make it under the bridge. As we passed them... one of the guys in the other boat raised his hands up (clearly I thought he was mad at us) but Kevin realized he was actually "waving us over" to fish the pod of "whatever" they were on. When we passed it looked like Tarpon.

When we pulled up it was actually a pod of HUGE migrating Black Drum. The other boats said to throw an artificial grub jig at them and so.... that's what we did.

2 hrs and 4 25lb or better fish later... we called it a day. The biggest fish (the one I'm holding below) is easily 50lbs. My 30lb Boga Grips (Fishing plier thingy's that have a scale on them) were maxed out and we didn't even have him halfway out of the water. I caught an 80lb Tarpon a few years ago that took about 25 minutes to land with a big rod and 100lb braided line. This 50 pounder was a MUCH longer fight since we were only using 7ft medium action rods with 10lb power pro line. Needless to say... it was CRAZY.