Leave behind thickets of pines and palmettos and head into the Gulf to experience some of the best sportfishing in the States. No matter how skilled you are, Dauphin Island deep sea fishing will test your patience. Truly spectacular deep seas lie miles offshore. It’s a stretch to go there and back again on a single day trip, but if you pass the test, you’ll be rewarded with impressive catches. When Yellowfin Tuna is a signature species, you know the fishing can’t be average.
What to catch and where to find it
When you say you want to go on a deep sea trip, local captains will ask ‘black or yellow?’ But there’s so much you can get here in addition to Blackfin and Yellowfin Tuna, that you won’t know where to start. Luckily, you don’t have to pick one — the deep sea fishing Dauphin Island has access to will spoil you after a single trip. You can catch Blue Marlin, Sailfish, Wahoo, Mahi, trophy-sized King Mackerel, and many more brutes if you drop the bait deep enough.
A full day trip is enough to get you to the reefs and wrecks in the deep water. Here you can troll for Kingfish and their acrobatic leaps are a real sight for sore eyes. Already 20 miles from dry land you can get Snapper, Grouper, and Amberjack.
But to get to the best deep sea fishing around here, you’ll need to take a 60-mile journey. Once you get to deep waters, usually on an overnight trip, Yellowfin and Blackfin Tuna start showing up in large numbers. Oil rigs and floating debris attract these savage feeders and make no mistake — you’ll need every ounce of strength to reel them in.
Move 10 miles further, and you’ll find a reef kingdom known as the Pinnacles. Lying 70 miles from Alabama coast, these 300 ft deep slopes are home to Amberjack, Snowy Grouper, and monster Red Snapper.
Sailfish, Blue, and White Marlin are Bluewater roamers — if you want to get them you’ll need to head far offshore, often times venturing past the 100-mile-radius from Dauphin Island. They travel fast, however, and can crush your line without you knowing they were there.
How to get them
Trolling for apex predators yields good results. Billfish and Tunas’s brute force is devastating so you’ll need to use all the heavy tackle you can get to tire them out before even thinking about pulling them overboard. To stand a chance against Tuna, you’ll first need to do some chunking to get them going, then troll with skirted trolling lures, or with Mackerel and Skipjack as bait.
You can get Marlin by slow trolling skipping bait, or fast trolling large skirted lures, such as Mold Craft soft heads.
