The Gulf Pier is noted for sheepshead, pampano and Spanish mackerel.
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Redfish on the right, snook on the left, trout up the middle.”
That’s the happy prognosis for a grand slam at Fort DeSoto Park, on the west side of Tampa Bay, where the combination of perfect location and marine topography creates one of the best fishing areas on the west coast of Florida.
The observation on the park’s fishery is from Jim Wilson, park supervisor, who has the good fortune to live in a palm hammock right on the beach in a setting that looks like something out of the South Pacific.
Wilson is an absolutely rabid flats angler who is frequently out on the beach well ahead of daylight to make a few casts before he begins his long days as the park’s eyes-everywhere head honcho.
“The fish are often smack up against the sand, so it’s a matter of easing along the shore and casting parallel, rather than wading in deep and throwing out towards the blue water beyond the bar,” says Wilson.
All the usual clear-water snook baits work here, including soft jerkbaits, notes Wilson. A plastic shrimp is also a great choice for this duty, and the trick is to put it well ahead of the fish, then let them swim up to it before you start creeping it away from them. (Don’t expect to fish after the beach crowd arrives—the beaches here draw some 2.6 million visitors a year, and it does get a bit too crowded to swing a rod on sunny weekends.)
According to Wilson, you can hide from the wind at DeSoto just about any direction it happens to be blowing, because there’s water in all directions.
“I usually find myself going to the downwind side, whatever that happens to be, because I love sight fishing and the lee always makes that easier,” says Wilson.
Fort DeSoto itself, a Spanish-American War era military ruins, sits atop Mullet Key, which sits on the north shore of Egmont Channel, the main pass into Tampa Bay and a major fish interstate for everything from pompano to Spanish to kings to tarpon. And on the north shore of the thousand-acre key runs Bunce’s Pass, a snook fishery extraordinaire, leading to endless little cuts, mini-keys and flats that are loaded with reds. And down the middle of the key runs Mullet Key Bayou—lots of trout, along with more snook, more reds; you get the picture.
The bayou was always fair fishing, but became a whole lot better in 2004 when a cut was put through the Pinellas Bayway, joining the east and west arms.
“That cut is 6 feet deep, and we now have 100 percent water exchange in the bayou every 24 hours,” says Wilson. “That flushing has made a huge difference, particularly in the snook populations.”
The canoe trail on Mullet Key Bayou lead to some great winter trout holes.
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My own experience around the park has been consistently good, too. The flat at the east end of the park makes off toward the Skyway, fronting directly on deep water of the open bay for all of that distance, and thus it’s a natural magnet for schools of jumbo reds that migrate in to spawn from August through early October. Unfortunately, several thousand of these big breeders were killed this past summer (2005) due to the extended red tide, but odds are more will move in next year. At times, the west end of the no-motor-zone at Tarpon Key, just to the northeast of Mullet Key, is like a parking lot with six to eight guide boats lined up tossing sardines to the rabid redfish. The scene makes up in action what it lacks in atmosphere; fishing is fantastic, especially in early fall.
Trout fishing can also be great on the east side of the park throughout the warmer months, with potholes and grass everywhere. Some of the best of these are small holes surrounded by water that’s too shallow to motor through; use a pushpole or drift until you come up on a green hole surrounded by the brown shallows, and toss a small jig, swimbait or topwater to the pothole. My wife and I once caught 32 trout on 32 casts to one of these spots, using 3-inch swimbaits. Most of the fish were 14 to 16 inches long. (Yep, we had debarbed hooks, and yep, they all swam off untouched by human hands.)
This Tampa Bay park offers a lot of nice spots for family fishing outings.
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For bigger trout, the deeper holes inside Mullet Key Bayou are a good bet throughout the cooler months. The spot known as Soldiers Hole, at the south tip of the bayou, is a famed spot for lunkers. Plastic shrimp are one of the favored baits for these yellowmouths. And there’s a kayak rental concession just down the bayou from the best fishing!
North Beach Lagoon is another good winter spot for big trout, as well as snook and reds. The fish pass into the south tip of the lagoon on rising tides, come back out on the fall, and anglers can ambush them without getting their feet wet as they cast from the east side of the cut. The lagoon is located near the parking area at the extreme northwest end of the park.
Jim Wilson is unusually generous with his knowledge of specific fishing spots around the park. If you stop by the park headquarters—you can’t miss it because there’s a monster flagpole out front right where Pinellas Bayway intersects the main park road—he’ll be glad to show you large-scale aerial photos of park waters that make it crystal clear exactly where the fish are likely to be, and also show the routes to get to them.
The boat ramp at Fort DeSoto, dropping directly into a protected area of Bunce’s Pass, has 30 bays, and is reportedly the largest in Florida. However, the convenience comes at a price; you now must pay $5 to use the ramps. Automated yellow machines take your money and issue a permit for your vehicle.
Bunce’s Pass provides deep, safe navigation going eastward into the main cuts of Tampa Bay. However, if you turn west to head out into the Gulf, it’s a challenge, with the navigable cut changing weekly and no markers to guide you—this is a high-sun passage only. However, once you’re on the outside, you don’t have to go far if you’re after tarpon;
the bar on the pass itself is a productive area, and Egmont Pass, second only to Boca Grande for numbers of deepwater fish from May through July, is down the beach just a mile or so.
The park’s campground is popular with anglers because it’s possible to pull your boat right up to many of the campsites. However, you’ll probably have to make reservations well in advance, particularly in the popular winter months when snowbirds fill up the spaces.
The piers at Fort DeSoto also offer good action for those without boats. The Gulf Pier is noted for producing snook and sheepshead around the rock groins next to the beach, pompano at the first pavilion, and Spanish at the end. Kingfish, tarpon and cobia are also hooked off the west end, which fronts directly on Egmont Pass.
The Family Pier, which includes a tackle and snack shop, offers shallower water than the Gulf Pier, but it’s a great spot for Spanish mackerel spring and fall, and also a noted cool-weather sheepshead spot.
For beachgoers, the white sand beach was rated number one in the nation by a national ranking service last year—unspoiled seagrass and seagrape backdrops as opposed to the usual high-rise condos were among the admired qualities. The beaches are also very attractive to anglers before the swimsuit crowd arrives, because on an east wind with a calm surf, you can sight-fish snook in the slough all summer long—best action is daylight to 9 a.m.
The $15 Egmont ferry loads up at the Bay, or Family Pier.
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If you can’t find enough action at Fort DeSoto, you can also use it as the jumping-off spot for a ferryboat trip to Egmont Key, just across Egmont Pass. The $15 ferryboat ride includes a chat on the history of the area, which is rich and varied. The only negative is that the ferry runs only during the middle of the day, missing the prime fishing periods at dawn and dusk. You can catch it at the Family Pier on the south shore of Mullet Key.
There are lots of hiking trails to keep the kids happy, and even a three-acre dog park, including a dog beach, in case you can’t bear to leave home without your pooches. In short, Fort DeSoto has a lot of what the real Florida is all about—and it’s all there for the taking by anyone who can manage the 85 cents in tolls for the bridges leading to the front entry.
Seatrout are a major target when the season opens in January.
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History at Fort DeSoto
According to the Pinellas County Parks Department, a tribe of Native Americans known as the Tocobagas lived on Mullet Key from about 1000 A.D. to the time that the Spanish explorers arrived, the first in 1528, followed by the more widely known Hernando DeSoto, the park’s namesake, in 1539. There’s no report of what happened to the Indians, but it probably was not anything good.
The first official record under U.S. settlement dates to February of 1849 when a group of U.S. Army Engineers, among them a young colonel by the name of Robert E. Lee, surveyed the area and recommended Mullet Key and Egmont Key for construction of military facilities. The fort construction did not get under way until after the Civil War, however; the arrival of the Spanish-American War was the catalyst, and construction began in November of 1898. Fort DeSoto, on the southwest tip of Mullet Key, was completed in May of 1900. It was, to say the least, heavily bunkered, with walls from 8 to 20 feet thick and ceilings of reinforced concrete 5 feet thick. Most of these original “battery” buildings still stand today, and some of the guns are still in place.
The post soldiers drank rainwater, and their sewage system dumped directly into Tampa Bay—a practice that continued pretty much unabated by municipalities all around the bay until the 1980s! Fortunately, far better sewage treatment has brought back water quality and fishing throughout Tampa Bay since then, and the clear waters here today belie their besmirched past.
The fort remained operational until 1923, a short life as military installations go, but modern weaponry rapidly made it obsolete. It’s doubtful that any of the enlisted men at the fort regretted its closing; reportedly, mosquitoes were so bad that sleep was impossible throughout the warmer months.
The piers attract a lot of bait, but boaters must stay clear of pier anglers.
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In 1940, the War Department turned Mullet Key into a bombing range, which had some interesting implications for modern anglers—the bomb holes found here and there across the flats to this day offer great fishing, particularly on low winter tides where there’s no other deep water available.
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The key was sold to Pinellas County for about $26,000 in 1948. What it would be worth in today’s real estate market boggles the mind, but fortunately there’s no danger of it ever being covered with high-rises and sailboard shops. The key was made a park in 1963.
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