Monday, October 31, 2005

Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico




One of my favorite pastimes is salt water fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. This is a picture of two of my fishing buddies on a recent trip. We are leaving from Dolphin Island, Alabama, and have high hopes of catching our limit of red snapper. It was a beautiful September morning and we got an early start. On the rignt is captain Ed. He lives in Mobile, Alabama, and owns the boat we went out on. It is a 25 foot dual hull fishing boat with all the electronics.



Above is one of our catch during the day, a fine red snapper. We were bottom fishing with cut bait on a sunken ship about 10 miles out from Mobile Bay in 80 feet of water. We ended up catching one short of our limit.


There are numerous oil and gas platforms or rigs in this area of the Gulf. Some are manned and some aren't. Some fishermen fish around them but we usually bottom fish submerged structure instead. We locate the spots by using electronics such as GPS and sonar.



This is a curious and hungry two foot shark on the surface. He would stick his head out of the water for a bite of squid that we dangled above him.