Light Tackle Red Snapper Fishing

Monday was the last day of red snapper season, so we decided to take our little bay boat offshore for some light tackle snapper fishing at the oil rigs about 10 miles straight south of the little lagoon pass.

Earlier this spring we bought a used 2008 21' extra wide center console carolina skiff dlv 218 bay series boat with a 8' cobia lookout tower.


It took us about 30 minutes to get out to the oil rig and we were pretty excited to see the graph light up as we approached! We had cast netted a bunch of pilchards and had a pile of frozen cigar minnows and some fresh dead shrimp as well..... It took all of 30 seconds to cast out a 1/4 oz jig head baited with a live pilchard to get slammed by a red snapper!!


The rig was in 65' of water, but we were catching the fish just 10-30' down! You want to talk about having fun with light tackle, here you go!! We were free lining and also jigging baits with 14 lb test and 7' ugly sticks.... Besides the oil rig in the background, there was no other debris in the water to get snagged on so we could just battle these fish in open water and actually get them in without breaking off too often...


These fish fight 10x harder than anything you can catch in freshwater.... (and they taste pretty stinkin' good too!) I still am daydreaming about all those big red snappers right below us at the one little rig out in no mans land.


It took all of 30 minutes to have our limit of red snappers with this technique!! Once we got our limit, Dad focussed on using shrimp for bait to catch mangrove snapper, triggerfish, and spade fish... he was having an absolute blast!


We caught a few smaller jacks and hard tails and send them out for bait for something big! We had a few broken lines on the big baits. Oh yeah we also caught a little chicken dolphin (mahi mahi) using a free lined cigar minnow:


Anyhow after a pack of big dolphins (real dolphins, like flipper) came swimming all around our boat, all of our fish headed for the safety of the oil rig.... we had fish all over around our boat until those dolphins came and spooked me all away... but nonetheless we packed up and headed back to land with a boatload full of fish!


So we were back by 10:30 am and spent the rest of the day just hanging out at the pool... later in the afternoon we took the girls out for a little boat ride and about a mile offshore we hooked into this big king mackeral and spanish mackeral while trolling.


Look at how pretty this spanish mackeral is... these fish are just awesome looking! One tip for eating mackeral is that you have to eat them fresh! They are very good when you eat them same day you catch them, but they get mushy fast and dont keep well. (especially they dont freeze good at all)... every day you wait to eat them they taste worse and worse...



Needless to say we had fish for dinner again... we cooked king mackeral burritos and grilled mahi mahi, spanish mackeral and triggerfish.... Actually we havent been out to eat at a restaraunt yet. Gulf Shores is loaded with awesome places to eat, but you just simply cant beat cooking and eating your own fresh fish from the gulf......

Tomorrow we are taking the day off from fishing and gonna take the kids shell picking on the beach!