Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

The Redington Long Pier extends over 1,000 feet into the gulf. Pier owner Tony Antonious charges $2 to walk out there, and $10 to fish along the pier.

In the 4th of July edition of the St. Pete Times, Outdoor editor Terry Tomalin says he was kicked off Redington Long Pier by some tarpon fishermen.

“Hi,” I said to two anglers fishing off the end of the pier. “Are you guys in the tarpon tournament?”

“What does it look like?” one of them responded.

After a moment of awkward silence, a second angler, who also refused to give his name, asked, “Do you feel welcome?”

“Not really,” I responded.

“Good …” he said. “Time for you to leave.”

With only a notebook and pen in hand, I clearly wasn’t there to fish. Instead, I began interviewing 14-year-old tournament angler Dustin Gable of St. Petersburg about a 98-pounder that he released.

That’s when another tournament angler called the pier manager. “Get the (expletive) off the pier,” the angler told me.

Tomalin was there checking it out after another fisherman complained that he was “asked” to leave the pier.

Pier owner Tony Antonious says anyone is welcome to fish from the pier but added that the West Coast Anglers have “exclusive rights” to the “T” area at the far western end of the pier. And just who are these West Coast Gangster Anglers?

Apparently, there has been a split among local tarpon fishing enthusiasts. Used to be that when you fished for tarpon, it didn’t matter if the fish died or not. But in this day of “love all, kill nothing,” all the local tournaments switched to no-kill. St. Petersburg’s 74-year-old Suncoast Tarpon Roundup was the last local contest that went to the all-release format.

That didn’t sit well with a group of mainly pier fishermen, so the West Coast Anglers Association (BEWARE: Auto-Audio!) began their own brand new Killing is OK With Us tournament. They want you to know that…

Florida’s tarpon population is not considered endangered because most anglers who target the species have been practicing catch-and-release for more than a decade. State regulations require anglers to purchase a tarpon tag to kill a tarpon. .

So the West Coast Trawl & Brawl aim to protect their turf (& surf!?!) as well as the right to murder the tarpon they catch:

“We kill tarpon,” said Paul Herrington, a member of the West Coast Anglers, the group hosting the Redington Shores tournament. “That is what we do.”

This brainiac also explains the “exclusive” rights to the pier: “It costs $150 for members to enter the tournament, and we give (Antonious) 15 percent of all the entry fees.”

So pier owner Tony Tony lets some chuckleheads police his property for a couple hundred bucks. And then he wants to pretend he’s not responsible:

“I go down there when I get a complaint, but the troublemakers are always gone. Nobody will tell me anything. It is like a mafia line.”

This is the same guy who complained that the city was out to get him AFTER he attempted to strong-arm Redington Shores into buying the pier for an inflated price.

This is nothing but a bunch of fishin’ hillbillies defending their right to kill and enforcing their turf while a greedy pier owner claims that his hands are tied. Losers all around.

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