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| View of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge from the fishing pier |
I never tire of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and
fishing pier. I
blogged about it on our first visit to St Pete and we've been back at least once on every subsequent trip. The old bridge is a
Florida state park where sportsmen -- and let's not forget women -- fish 24 hours a day. By mid-afternoon on Sunday, some of the people we talked to had been fishing since Saturday evening.
More fun than a visit by ourselves was introducing John, Trudy and the boys to the fishing pier. The day was spectacularly beautiful, sunny but not too hot. The pier was lined with people fishing, often with several lines in the water. I got out of the van a little early so that I could walk the last quarter-mile or so to the end of the pier.
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| Trudy Hennessey caught John with a big fish |
As I walked along, I heard swearing in many English, Spanish, Russian and several Asian languages when a fish was lost or lines became tangled. The "serious" fishermen were at the very end of the pier, sometimes assisted in the landing process by a guy with a menacing grappling hook at the end of a long rope. The pelicans and other seabirds watched carefully, ready for any tidbit of bait or rejected fish. Dolphins did their own fishing, near the pier and in the distance.
We stayed for an hour. One of the highlights: John posed for a picture with a large
bonito (we heard "bonita") caught by a fisherman who struggled with it for fifteen or twenty minutes.
More photos on
FB.
