Having to be down in the Orlando area this year back in July to go cover ICAST this year, I decided to drive down a day early to get some fishing in. I went over to the world-famous Skyway Pier in Tampa. This is the longest fishing pier in the world, built from the original cantilevered Sunshine Skyway Bridge. This bridge had a partial collapse back in 1980 when a freighter crashed into the pilings. But now after removing all the damaged sections, it has become a great fishing destination. The state utilized the rubble from the old pier to make long sections of artificial reef on both sides of the pier. These are actually large enough to see on Google Maps. While I left in the early AM to start my way down to Florida, I arrived to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge area around noon. Following I-275 down I got off on the exit right before the Sunshine Skyway bridge, make sure to pay attention and not end up on the bridge itself, following the signs to go towards the Skyway Fishing Pier State Park.
Once you get past this section of breakwaters and riprap you finally get to the entrance onto the pier itself. While at every other pier I’ve fished this is where I would park and then start loading my gear onto a pier cart, the Skyway is different. Instead of loading up a cart you drive up to the pier entrance booth, pay $8 for a day pass, and just keep driving onto the pier itself. Of course, it is slow going, the speed limit on the Skyway Pier is listed at 5 mph for the safety of everyone fishing the pier. Anglers are often crossing back and forth so pay attention as you drive out.
As you go further out onto the pier and further from the new Sunshine Skyway Bridge you can see sections of the old east span of the old bridge. While the east span was originally connected to the west span and fishable, back in 2008 they deemed it unsafe due to corrosion and failing concrete. So they disconnected it from the newer west span and demolished portions of it. That rubble along with older rubble is in the water to the west of the Skyway Fishing Pier as artificial reefs. About 2/3rds of the way down the pier you run into the Skyway Bait Shop, a 24/7 bait shop that has tackle, live bait, snacks, and drinks. Also connected to it is a bathroom, which is nice compared to the porta-johns that are scattered along the length of the pier. I made a quick stop here grabbing some long shank j-hooks incase the Spanish mackerel made a showing, and saw they had a ton of live shrimp for sale for not too terrible of a price. I also noticed a sign here talking about the Skyway Fishing Pier Education Course. This is a required course you must take to fish on the Skyway Pier, this was put in place by FWC to help with bird entanglement and mortality on the pier. The course consists of several video segments and a quiz at the end, probably take you 20 minutes to do.
After finishing the course and finally making it the one and half miles out to the end of the pier I finally got started fishing. I’m not gonna lie, it looked dead out. This is July in middle Florida, right at the sun’s highest point for the day. It’s hot out and the wind is blowing a bit, additionally, the tide was just about to finish going out. These were very sub-optimal fishing conditions, but there was some bait visible shimmering around the pilings on the east side of the pier. So I dropped down a tiny Size 6 sabiki and started getting some live bait in short order. I was getting a mix of small to large LYs or greenies as the locals call them. I threw them into my livewell and then put a cold canned drink in there as well. In the summer heat, you want to put cold drinks into the live well to keep your bait frisky, colder water holds more oxygen. Also, you don’t want to overfill a live well in the heat, you’ll just end up with a lot of dead bait if you do.
With the bait secured, I rigged up a couple of rods to fish the pier. You’re only allowed to have two rods out per person out here so do be aware of regulations on the pier, they change seasonally. One rod was a 7ft medium St. Croix Mojo inshore rod with a JDM Daiwa Certate on it, and the other was my king setup of a 9ft custom Cavitt rod and a new Penn Spinfisher VII 6500 Bailess. So on the St Croix & Daiwa combo, I set out some cut-up LY on a Carolina rig, and on the king setup I had a larger live LY on a 40lb fluoro leader on a circle hook. The goal was to hopefully hook up on a tarpon as they passed through. I had seen a couple roll right on the surface as soon as I had gotten to the end of the pier.
So using the outgoing tide to my advantage I started to flatline out my live bait, similar to how I fish for king mackerel up in the Panhandle. I pitch the bait out, leaving the line off the roller so the bait can go with the current. Additionally, when something does take the bait there is no resistance to spook the fish off. So after letting out the line for a bit, I noticed the guys fishing the west corner of the pier had one of their rod doubled over on something. This turned out to be a dolphin that had taken the bait and was using the tension to rip their bait off the hook.
Then something took my flatline bait as well, immediately pulling the line off my index finger and taking line. Hoping for a tarpon I gave it a second to take in the bait and circle hook before flipping the line onto the roller. As soon as I do the drag starts singing for a second then the line goes slack. Unfortunately this “fish” comes up for air, I had a dolphin messing with my bait as well. It had used the drag to just steal my bait. Dolphins are intelligent and have good eyesight so they just grab the bait and avoid the hooks. This was pretty much how the next few hours went for me, I flatline out a bait for a dolphin to come and take it. Eventually, though I did have one play a little too close with the bait. I think it got the circle hook snagged on itself somewhere, after this happened the dolphin really made a run for it. I cranked down my drag to try and pull the hook again, causing the dolphin to turn before the hook did pull loose thankfully. After that I said to hell with it and stopped fishing the flatline. It just wasn’t worth the effort in the heat.
I packed the king rod away and just started fishing the bottom rig, using chunks of LYs that I guess were small enough to not be worth messing with for the dolphins. I would get bites here and there on this, but was getting picked clean. There must have been a ton of pinfish out there just mauling whatever bait I put out. As the afternoon went on though I struck up conversation with a couple of cool local dudes, Gerise of 392.Fishing and Ant of antwentfishing. Talking to them Gerise picked up real quick that I fish up in the panhandle, only people who fish up there call greenies, LYs. I fished and talked with them for the rest of the afternoon, learning how to fish the Skyway Pier. Learning from locals in person is honestly the best way to learn how to fish a spot. While online I was told that shrimp was a waste of time on the pier, they showed me that was wrong pretty quick. They started decking some mangrove snapper right away on the live shrimp. Well at least when you could get the bait past a pinfish. The pinfish were brutal out there, shredding shrimp and baitfish almost instantly.
Along with fishing for mangroves, they also put out some set lines to fish the rubble piles. Ant getting a small lane snapper off that rod. I also watched how they floated out baits to fish on the far side of the east span of Skyway. We chummed and netted a bunch of small “greenies” and tried to chum up some more mangroves but all we got was more pinfish. Ant did catch one of the biggest pinfish I have ever seen, this thing was bigger than some of the snapper I saw coming over the rail. We thought it was a porgy originally before it cleared the rail. This thing was a monster.
Eventually, though the sun started setting and dolphins were just getting thicker, watched these guys have every single shark bait stolen by a dolphin, so it was about time to head out. I had a long drive over to Lakeland that night before heading to Orlando in the morning for the first day of ICAST. While the fishing wasn’t what I hoped for, it was still a cool experience to fish the longest fishing pier in the world. Also, give Gerise of 392.Fishing and Ant of antwentfishing a follow on IG if you can, they’re fishy dudes and helped me out a ton.
