Fort Desoto Saltwater Fishing Part 1

If you live in the Tampa Bay area, and don’t have access to a boat to go fishing, there are some good piers that you can go to. I live in Saint Petersburg Florida and I do most of my fishing off of the Fort Desoto Piers. Yes I said piers, there are two of them. If you have the right saltwater fishing tackle you can catch enough fish to have a nice dinner for a couple of nights. The main pier is the long ass one, it’s about 2 football fields in length, so if you have a lot of fishing gear you better have some friends to help you lug it out there, or have a custom tackle box with wheels, which a lot of people that fish that pier use.

The pier offers all sorts of good fishing, you can get snook, redfish, snapper, grouper, sheepshead and more I am sure, these are the main keepers that I throw in my cooler after catching them. You will need a nice spinning rod and some light tackle to nail these fish. Lot’s of people will use their cast net to catch some shiners and use them for bait, this is not recommended, yes you will catch some fish off the pier but think about it, why are you going to use bait you catch, to the same spot where you are trying to catch some fish. These fish that swim around this pier eat the same damn thing all day, and the chances of them biting your hook are not that great.

So what kind of bait should you use? When you first enter Fort Desoto there is a bait shop there, they sell live shrimp, you want to get there early in the morning so that you can get the big ones. And you want to get out to the pier early so that you can beat the crowd, and plus first thing in the morning is when the fish are going to be hungry, especially if you throw some nice big, live shrimp in front of them, they are not going to hesitate on biting the hook. Think about it, live shrimp is the way to go when saltwater fishing in Fort Desoto.

Tarpon Fishing Story

About ten years ago I had landed the biggest fish that I had ever caught in my life, of course I was saltwater fishing and it was a tarpon. I was with my dad, my uncle, and my uncles friend on his huge ass 40 foot fishing boat, this thing was freaking huge. We were fishing off of the coast of fort Meyers florida, it was about 25 miles offshore. We were trolling all day and we were getting some bites, but not much. And I was young and naïve and kept talking about when I get that big fish on line I was going to reel that sucker in no problem. Man was that a mistake talking all of that crap.

So we were using some heavy duty fishing rods, it was so long ago that I can’t even remember what kinf of bait we were using, but on one of the big rods we got a huge hit. Ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing ! Went the fishing line, and I immediately jumped out of my chair and grabbed the rod, the fish was on, it was a tarpon, and he was running for his life. For about 30 minutes I could not even get one reel in, the fish had kept running and wouldn’t stop. Finally he gave in a little bit and let me get a couple of reels in, he had circled me around the boat at least 20 times, I was fighting this tarpon for about 2 hours, and my ass was beat. But we finally got the tarpon up on the boat after two hours of battling this fish that had weighed more than I did, about 175 lbs.

Now I know that this isn’t a huge fish to some fisherman but for a 16 year old kid it was quite a catch. And no I do not have a picture of the fish anymore, I have no idea what I had done with it, so you are just going to have to take my word on this okay?

About Me and My Saltwater Fishing Blog

Hi everyone, my name is Frank, and I have been saltwater fishing almost my whole life. I first picked up a rod and caught my first fish when I was only about 5 years old. See my dad was a pretty good fisherman, and he would take me out fishing all of the time. My uncle, he is an expert fisherman, he has been doing this crap for over 40 years, and he also has a son that is just as good as he is. I remember when I was you just fishing off of my dock out back, I would tun a spotlight on and wait for nightfall, this would attract many fish, and most of them were snook. It was like feeding candy to a baby.

Anyways enough about that I am getting off of the subject way to early, I am making this blog so that when I get old and cant remember a damn thing, I can come back here and read about all of the saltwater fishing that I have done in my life. I can look at all of the pictures of my trophy's that I have reeled in. I am only 26 years old as of now, and I plan on keeping an update on this thing for a while, I am here to share my life with anyone that wants to read information on my adventures out into the ocean on my uncles boat catching some damn fish. These are my stories of saltwater fishing.