Monday, September 29, 2008

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.

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