The park gives "night pass"(you must request the combination to the gate combination lock) owners access to the entire park on a fishing only basis.

There is another spot I have fished that occasionally has snook. If you go all the way to the end right before you make the uturn around the bend. Make that right just before the uturn. There are occasionally rattlesnakes on the island so beware. Follow that trail to the parking spaces and park. Get out of your car and walk toward the restrooms and continue following the trail and you will see small opeinings in the mangroves leading to a small channel. Get in the water and wade the edges working a jerk bait(maybe dark green with gold glitter and green glitter) along the mangrove edges on a super high tide and you may find a good size snook in there. I personally have only fished there a couple times(once recently by boat) but never caught anything.

Best bet is get something in the deep part of hurricane pass(most number of species in the deep reefy bottom of the pass). The passes like the outgoing.

Those passes do let you in the park actually...Chris confirmed it with me today. I actually had a friend that was interested in buying one of those passes as well and he said the same thing...

Go to the front page of TOF, snook are thick. Myself and Capt Mike caught them at every place we stopped and fished. The biggest being 40 inches and most in the 34 inch range. Very few males were on the beach. We caught a few males on the back side.

www.theonlinefisherman.com/captain-david...-clearwater-pinellas

DavidT wrote:
Take your annual pass along with driver's license and etc and you can apparently get a tag/sticker for your vehicle that allows for after hours parking. You can then start getting the monthly codes to get into the park early/late. Access is restricted to fishing only on the beaches...they call it "fisherman" access or something.

I'm thinking of this as an option that'll get me some early/late fishing time without picking up aggro from the wife...saving the longer trips for yaks / boats / etc...

CaptainDavid wrote:
Great article and very timely!

See you guys on Thursday...will be bringing a neighbor I'm working on converting to a TOF reader. :thumbsup:

my buddy swears by massive rapalla x-raps off the dog beach

groupernugget wrote:
Thanks...will put this on the "To Do List".

we used to try and surf with the comibination early morning(park doesn't open til 8a, and dawn patrol aka d.p. usually serves up the best surf) but the park rangers aren't having it.

Chris......you know I've been wanting to do some full moon wading at night. I'll be at the cast net seminar tomorrow evening and will talk to you about it then. As long as there are a few other guys going I'm okay with the wading at night thing.

I'm assuming, of course, that your pass will let you fish with others.

Barry