SEEING “RED”
by John N. Felsher
Bama’s Snapper Good Old
Days Are Here Now!
F
rom the top deck of the 65-foot party
boat, the dark blue waters appeared
to turn scarlet as anglers off the stern
pulled up two red snapper at a time, a
one-person limit on one drop.
“We have to move again,” the
captain yelled down from the bridge.
“Pull the lines up.”
No, we didn’t experience a plague
of biblical proportions turning the Gulf
of Mexico into blood. Moreover, catching
two 10 to 15-pound red snapper at a time
usually means a good thing. However, we
had already filled our limit with the
delicious fish and that didn’t take very
long.
“Red snapper are everywhere,”
advised Grady Sowards with Reel
Surprise Charters, in Orange Beach, AL.
“After we catch our snapper limit, we
have to run from them to go find other
species. Fishing is definitely better than
it was years ago. Snapper are getting a
lot bigger and there are plenty of them.”
Typically, whenever someone
brought up a line with a snapper on the
terminal end, a dozen or more other fish
tried to steal the bait from the hooked
one’s mouth. At each spot, multitudes of
other snapper, some much bigger than
ones we had already put on the boat, came
up near the surface to snatch any morsels
they could gulp.
“Most people drop lines straight to
the bottom,” Sowards said. “Often, the
biggest fish are up near the surface and
hold off from the structure a bit. Once
the fish know we are there, they come up
from 120 feet of water. On calm days,
we’ll see big schools of snapper about
30 yards from the boat. If someone
wanted to, they could throw some
topwater baits, spoons, or other lures on
light tackle and have a blast.
Despite strict federal regulations,
brief seasons and small daily creel limits,
charter boat skippers all along the Gulf
Coast report outstanding snapper fishing.
While many people fish near offshore
oilfield structures off Louisiana and
Texas, the waters off Alabama can
provide some of the best red snapper
fishing in the nation.
With only about 53 miles of
coastline, the smallest on the Gulf Coast,
Alabama ranks disproportionately high
among snapper fishermen. What the state
lacks in coastal mileage, it more than
makes up with an abundance of artificial
reefs. Alabama placed more than 20,000
artificial reefs in the Gulf, many within
easy range of small boats running out of
Orange Beach, Gulf Shores or Dauphin
Island.
“Alabama has a very active artificial
reef program,” stated Dr. Bob Shipp, a
retired University of South Alabama
professor who served on the Gulf of
Mexico Fishery Management Council for
years and author of the book Dr. Bob
Shipp’s Guide to Fishes of the Gulf of
Mexico. “That program has created
extensive habitat for snapper on a bottom
that was previously just mud.
Consequently, snapper stocks off
Alabama are extremely healthy.”
Now, anglers off Alabama frequently
catch 15 to 30-pound red snapper and a
few in the 40-pound range with little
difficulty. Depending upon the location
and depth, these reefs might also attract
numerous other snapper species, grouper,
triggerfish, amberjack, and roving
predators such as king mackerel and
cobia.
“I’ve been fishing a long time and
fishing off the Alabama coast now is 10
times better than it was in the 1970s or
80s,” explained Scooter Lang of Dauphin
Island Adventure Charters. “We used to
average about five pounds per fish, but
now we’re up to about eight pounds per
fish. It’s not hard to catch a limit of 10to 20-pounders in some places.”
Artificial reefs range from concrete
(Continued on page 18.)
David Sikes shows off a red snapper caught in the Gulf south of Orange Beach. Snapper often rise in the water column
Photos by author.
and feed at the surface. Larger snapper are often found higher in the water column.
6
GULF COAST FISHERMAN
W W W. G U L F F I S H I N G. C O M