THREE-STORY FISHING

Heading Out for Three-Story Fishing

EDITOR'S NOTE: You can catch more fish and have more fun if you know how to fish all three stories of the water. On a family outing to Orange Beach, Alabama, my family and friends had rod-bending action all day.

"Grab the fly line, Kate," Captain Bobby Walker yelled to my daughter from the bridge of the "Summer Breeze II" based in Orange Beach, Alabama, as her reel peeled off line under the hard charge of a silver king mackerel. Josh Reidinger of Birmingham, Alabama, held a rod bowed-up with a big red snapper coming off up the bottom. And to my left I heard, "golly, I can't hold him, and I can't stop him," my son John Jr. yelled as he locked his knees under the rail of the boat and held on while a big amberjack headed for Mexico. Although the chaos on the deck distracted me, I soon bumped back into reality when I felt a hard thump at the end of my line. I watched as my rod dove to kiss the salty brine.

"Y'all hold 'em," Walker yelled out.

He sounded like a cheerleader trying to encourage the home team in the 4th quarter with one yard to go in a football game on the home team's goal line. Our whole crew battled big ones above an old barge Walker had sunk many years ago to make an artificial-fishing reef. Many captains along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico practice three-story fishing, also known as stack fishing, a technique that allows anglers to fish for the widest variety of game fish possible in three-different depths of water. To understand how to catch these stacked fish, you must first know where to find each species of fish and why each species frequents a different segment of water.

For more information on how to fish three stories of water simultaneously, contact Captain Bobby Walker, P.O. Box 100, Orange Beach, AL 36561, or call (251) 981-6159. You can contact the Alabama Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau at 1-800-745-7263 or www.gulfshores.com.

TOMORROW: WHAT'S ON TOP