Visit the Upper Gulf Coast for Outstanding September Fishing Offshore and Inshore
Day 4: More on September Amberjack Fishing at Alabama’s Gulf Coast
 Because anglers only can keep one amberjack per person, even with a party of 12 or 15 people, there only may be three or four people fishing at one time. “You never know which way those amberjacks will run, and a fisherman needs plenty of deck space when he’s trying to land a big amberjack,” Captain Bobby Walker of the “Summer Breeze II” charter boat docked at Zeke’s Marina in Orange Beach, Ala., advises. “Also, when an amberjack gets high in the water, it can tangle a lot of lines, if you have too-many people fishing at once. After the first four anglers get their amberjacks onboard, the next four anglers will fish for amberjacks. We’ll continue this rotation, until everybody catches his jacks.”
You’ll usually find plenty of amberjacks in a school. So, everyone onboard catching a jack isn’t uncommon. On a recent trip with Protective Life Insurance out of Birmingham, Ala., we stopped on one of Walker’s spots, and everyone got their amberjacks in about an hour or less. When asked what the average-sized amberjack will weigh, Walker explains, “If you’re fishing within 20 to 30 miles of port, the average amberjack will be 20 to 30 pounds. But when you go offshore, your amberjack often will weigh from 30- to 50-pounds each. We caught our biggest amberjack ever on our boat in 2009, and it weighed 107 pounds. That same day we caught a second amberjack that weighed 107.2 pounds. We caught one off a big rock about 300-feet off the bottom and the second one on a flat hard bottom where we were fishing for scamp.”
 Walker prefers to eat his amberjacks fried or grilled. He says that both are delicious and that, “It takes a bad cook to mess-up fresh amberjack.”
One of the funniest sights in the world in late summer and throughout the fall and the winter is a bottom-fishing trip for vermilion snapper, triggerfish and white snapper. On these types of trips, you’ll catch a wide variety of reef fish. While everyone’s having a good time and catching plenty of fish, several rods suddenly will look like question marks. Anglers will scream for someone to grab their ankles to keep them from being pulled overboard by a school of amberjacks. “Oftentimes when you’re fishing for reef fish, the first time you come-up from the bottom, if a school of amberjacks is around, the amberjacks will attack and eat the reef fish when they get higher in the water,” Captain Bobby Walker explains. “The anglers will be having a good time catching small fish, and a big amberjack may jump-on that small fish and eat it. Then, a war ensues. Those amberjacks will eat your catch when your fish are coming-up from the bottom, if the amberjacks see them.” But having an amberjack attack your line isn’t a bad thing. If you’re fortunate enough to land the jack, you’ll have a 20- to a 30-pound fish to take home for dinner instead of a 2- or a 3-pound fish.
 To contact Captain Bobby Walker, email him at captainbobbywalker@yahoo.com, visit www.bobbywalker.com, or call 251-981-6159 or 251-747-3575.
 With red-snapper season closed, amberjacks will be one of the prized, targeted fish off Alabama’s Gulf Coast during September through the wintertime. Amberjacks are a good fish to come in with after you’ve been tuna fishing well offshore. “On the way in from a tuna or a wahoo trip, we’ll usually stop to try to catch amberjacks, grouper and vermilion snapper,” Walker says. “We’ve got some great offshore fishing here at Orange Beach during this time of the year, but most people don’t even take advantage of it.”
Captain George Pfeiffer of the “Emerald Spirit” talks about what he catches: http://youtu.be/vt8stZrNrZ8. To meet even more of our captains and fishermen before you visit Alabama’s Gulf Coast, visit my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com.
Go to www.orangebeach.com to learn more about fishing, captains, accommodations, recreation and restaurants, or call 1-800-745-SAND.
 For more information on saltwater fishing on Alabama’s Gulf Coast and for an opportunity to meet the captains that you can fish with, get the new Kindle ebook “Alabama’s Offshore Fishing: A Year-Round Guide for Catching Over 15 Species of Fish ” by John E. Phillips. Go to http://www.amazon.com. Or, you can go to www.amazon.com/kindle-ebooks and type-in the name of the book, download it to your Kindle, and/or download a Kindle app for your iPad, SmartPhone or computer.
|
