Where 2 Fish in Florida: The Skyway Pier
By: Ryan Seeloff
1/17/10- One place that I have wanted to fish for more than a decade is the Skyway Pier in St. Petersburg.
The Skyway Pier is actually the remnants of the old Skyway Bridge that linked St. Petersburg with Bradenton. On May 9, 1980 a freighter entering Tampa Bay crashed into the old Skyway Bridge knocking out the middle of the bridge.
A new bridge was built and both the northern and southern sections of the old bridge became instant hits with local fisherman as well as being renowned as the longest fishing piers in the world.
Back in 1989 when I moved to Florida my stepdad and I fished on the Skyway Pier many times with much success. We regularly caught flounder, a couple types of grouper (Up to 20 lbs), spanish mackeral, kingfish, sea trout, snook, redfish, mangos, tarpon (Never landed one though), and the ever present black sea bass.
In those days you had to park your vehicle at the beginning of the bridge and hike all of your stuff out to where you wanted to fish. The parking area would at times be littered with stolen shopping carts that people would use to haul their gear out to their favorite fishing spot. Many people (Including my stepdad and I) purchased fishing carts to haul their gear.
There were no bathrooms on the pier back then. The closest place to relieve yourself appropriately was at the the rest area which required fishermen to walk back to their vehicle and drive to the rest area. This lack of a restroom on the pier resulted in what I like to call the Skyway Pee'er. Although never something you would want to see it is much better than the dreaded Skyway Dump (Don't ask me to explain).
When my son told me that he wanted to go to the big Tampa RV Show for his birthday I knew at once that I wanted to take a trip over to see how the old pier is doing these days.
With my wife and daughter backing out of the trip to spend some "Girl Time" together I invited my nephew to join us.
I did some research on the pier to see how the old pier was doing and to my surprise I found out that the Skyway Pier is now a state park. Not only that, you can drive onto the pier and there are bait/snack shops and restrooms on each span. The bad part of this is that now there is a fee to bring your vehicle onto the pier and an additional fee for each person in the vehicle.
$4.00 per vehicle, $4.00 per adult, $2.00 per child 6-12
Now with a little better idea of what to expect we packed up for my son's first trip to the Tampa area.
From past experience I packed an assortment of tackle including four 7'6 lightweight spinning outfits with 12-15lb test (The rods I use locally for fishing in the river), a pair of heavyweight spinning rods with 25lb test (These are my offshore spinning rods and you always set out a heavier rod with a live bait on it when fishing the Skyway Pier), and my huge softside tackle box loaded with an assortment of bottom rig making material and plenty of extras. Also packed into one of the pockets were some sabiki rigs for catching live bait.
We were a bit unlucky with the weather as a mild cold front was coming through the Tampa area as we checked into our hotel. Knowing that getting caught in high winds and rain is not the best way to spend time on the Skyway Pier we decided to wet our lines the next morning.
After a filling Embassy Suites breakfast we hit the road over to St. Pete to find beautiful yet chilly conditions as we paid our $14 and went to look for a spot to park the truck on the northern section of the pier.
There were only a few other people fishing and that proved to be a sign of things to come as the place is usually bustling with people.
We drove to the end of the pier and ran inside the bait/snack shop to pick up some bait. There are plenty of live and frozen baits available and I picked up a package of frozen squid since that would stay on the hook better than shrimp and the Skyway Pier is known for its bait stealing masses of small sea bass and snapper (Whenever you by frozen squid and plan on using it soon you should put some water into the package to get the thawing process started).
We picked a spot not far from the bait/snack shop and got the gear out. I soon had my son with a squid tipped hook in the water and my nephew went to work with a sabiki rig to see what types of baitfish were hanging around. Turns out that it was easy to catch a dozen little pinfish type baits (Not sure what they call them over there) and I put one on the pointy end of one of the big spinning rods and tossed it out.
With the exception of a few bites we came up totally dry with the exception of the sabiki caught bait. That was actually pretty cool for my son when he took a turn jigging the sabiki next to a piling to see how many fish he could hook at one time. The only consolation is that no one else was catching anything else as the cold front totally shut down the bite along the pier.
After an hour of not catching anything and knowing that we had to go to the RV Show we packed up and headed out empty handed.
I am not one to take a beating sitting down and my nephew and I will be venturing back over to the southern span of the Skyway Pier this spring to embark on an overnight fish/sleep/fish marathon.
Stay tuned for the next installment of Where 2 Fish in Florida as we tackle Jetty Park in Cape Canaveral before the end of January.
For more information on the Skyway Pier please visit the following links;
Florida State Parks, Sunshine Skyway Fishing Piers