MONSTER HAUL OF RED SNAPPER
The “Therapy”
EDITOR'S
NOTE: During 30 days of fishing in the spring of 2004,
more than 8,000 anglers on 95 boats participated in
the Orange Beach Red Snapper World Championship and
caught big snapper with more than 28 of them weighing
over 25-pounds each. This year’s Championship
will take place April 21 – May 20, 2005 with headquarters
at Zeke’s Marina. Total tournament monies will
be $500,000 with a $200,000 bonus if a new world ‘s
record red snapper is caught, but anglers only will
pay $5 per fisherman per day to enter the tournament.
All proceeds from the tournament will go to support
the building of public reefs and conducting red snapper
research. You can buy tickets to participate at Blue
Water Ships Stores in Foley, Ala., Outcast Bait and
Tackle in Pensacola, Fla., and in Orange Beach, Ala.
at J&M Tackle, Orange Beach Marina, Outcast Marina,
Sam’s Stop & Shop, San Roc Cay Marina, Sportsman
Marina, the Rod Room, Top Gun Tackle, Trent Marina and
Zeke’s Landing Marina. To learn more about the
Championship, visit www.gulffishing.net
where you
also can see a list of captains and their contact information;
or call: (251) 981-8565; the Orange Beach Fishing Association
at (251) 981-2300; or the Alabama Gulf Coast Convention
and Visitors Bureau (www.orangebeach.com)
at (800) 745-SAND.
“I normally fish out of my own boat,”
reported Robert Weir, Jr., of Carrollton, Georgia, who
caught the third-place snapper that weighed 30.30 pounds.
“I go to the Gulf of Mexico 10 or 15 times in
the spring and the summer to fish for snapper. But since
my boat was out of commission, my family and I chartered
the ‘Therapy.’ We’d never fished with
Captain John Andrews before, and we didn’t know
it at the time, but the boat wasn’t entered in
the tournament. However, our entire party had bought
$5 tickets to enter. We’d already caught a good
mess of snapper and went to some natural bottom to fish
for grouper. I
was using a vermillion snapper for bait, a standard
snapper rig with an egg sinker up the line and a barrel
swivel below it, a 5-foot leader and a circle hook.
The captain said he’d never caught a snapper on
this coral reef during his years of fishing. We were
about 45 miles out of Orange Beach when I caught the
third-place snapper. I won $10,000 for this biggest
snapper I’d ever caught.”
Weir has developed his own techniques for catching
big snapper. “You must …
* “use as light a weight as possible to get your
bait down but keep the weight from spooking the snapper.
* “fish with fluorocarbon leader instead of monofilament
since snapper
can’t see the fluorocarbon as well as they can
spot the monofilament.
* “fish much higher in the water than most snapper
fishermen do. If the bottom is at 150 feet, I like to
keep my bait at about 50 feet off the bottom. I’m
convinced that really-big snapper will come up well
off the bottom to take a bait.”
The fishermen at Orange Beach, Alabama, know where
and how to find and catch some of the biggest red snapper
taken from the Gulf of Mexico. Use these tips to help
you locate and take gorilla-sized snapper whether you
fish during the 2005 Red Snapper World Championship
or not.
TOMORROW: WE ALL WON
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