Merry Pier

If you’re staying in the Treasure Island/​St Petersburg area and looking to do something different to do head to Pass — a — Grill beach; a quaint little area of St Petersburg and check out Merry Pier.
Merry Pier is a small pier/​boat dock which rents fishing poles, offers boat tours, is a general store in terms of fishing & boating supplies, drinks, and freshly caught fish for sale. Its several things rolled into one. It’s located a half block up from the bus stop in a lovely area called Pass — a — Grill that is a small, but beautiful community. You also can catch the Shell Shuttle from Merry Pier which shuttles you to an undeveloped island known for the best shelling in the area and only accessible by boat. I would have loved to do that but was deterred by the steep price of $ 24/​pp!
Pole rental is $ 18.99 for 4 hours plus the cost of a temporary salt water permit of $ 3/​pp if you don’t already have one. Full day rod rental was also available. The $ 3 permit is good ONLY for Merry Pier and NOT the small piers surrounding it. Technically there should be a $ 3 permit for each person but we took our chances to save $ 3 and only got one with no problems. You do not need to rent a rod to fish here and are welcome to bring your own supplies. This is probably a place better known to locals as we didn’t see any advertising for it. We discovered it by doing a google search of fishing in the area. There were several other people there, and this place is small so I could see at peak hours problems with lines getting twisted together due to lack of space.
Being a novice fisherman and having no expertise in salt water fishing I wasn’t sure if we wanted to spurge for a rod for each of us so we only got one. Rod rental came with a dozen shrimp for bait — bait that is live. Had we known that in advance we probably would have backed out but we didn’t so we made the best of it. Baiting a live fish was a bit of a challenge. A challenge that fortunately my husband was up for because there is no way I was touching those things! We were given a tutorial at the time of our rental which was helpful and he did eventually get the hang of it. We didn’t come prepared with a pair of gloves and live shrimp do have a jagged piece on them. The shop keeper graciously let us use his gloves upon his request. If not I don’t know how we would of managed. Bringing a pair of gloves is highly recommended.
Although we loved our fishing experience it was like giving the fish a free lunch. We fished close to the pier store and as soon as we put the bait in the water had bites. But they didn’t catch. It was probably related to our inexperience baiting the hook. We fished nonstop for about 3 hours taking turns using the pole and caught a total of 5 fish. Not a bad catch but we would have caught a lot more if they didn’t take our bait. We also ran out of bait pretty quickly but another dozen were only $ 3 and we counted more than 12.
Instead of throwing back our catch as we had no means to store it we instead chose to feed the pelicans on standby. A win — win for both!

Boat rides and shuttle service to the nearby preserve. Fishing supplies, snacks and now even a smallish fresh seafood market. Definitely a cool little place to check out, even if you are only looking to take a couple water-​front photos.
PS. Update coming soon with more details on shuttle service.
[update] OK, so here’s the deal. For $ 25 ($ 12.50 for children 12 and under) you have two options:
1) The Shell Key Shuttle, which (obviously takes you to Shell Key —
, a wonderful preserve for a very quiet and natural afternoon.
2) A Sunset Cruise involving 1.5 hours of sightseeing and dolphin watching through the intercoastal, finishing in the barrier islands south of Pass-​a-​Grille, which is were the sunset viewing occurs. If interested, do make a reservation.
For more information on both options, see the Shell Key Shuttle review (s) and URL here: