If you don't have a boat, fish the bridges or one of several piers in the area. If you want to try some wade fishing, I'd recommend Fort Desoto Park (a Pinellas County park just across the skyway from you). Especially the picnic area on Bunces Pass. It's a short hike, but look for the bridge over the lagoon and walk around to the inlet side of the lagoon. You can walk out on relatively hard sand to about your waste and cast to the darker water in front of you. Get a floating bait bucket that you can tie to yourself so you don't have to go back and forth to the beach to get a new bait. Live bait always trumps lures, but you can use a variety of lures. You'll find sea trout, snook, reds, flounder, maybe an occasional cobia or two and a variety of other species that travel the pass on the tides. Finally, I think kayak fishing is a hoot and will enable you to fish the shorelines, cover a lot ground and take in the beauty of the Florida Gulf Coast estuarine environment.