THREE-STORY FISHING

All-Day Rod Bending

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 enjoyed rod-bending action all day.

You fish all three types of rigs simultaneously in stack fishing. If a king mackerel attacks the drifted cigar minnow, the deck hand will set the hook and pass the rod to an angler in the cockpit. The other anglers have the option of fishing for amberjack in the middle of the stack or using bottom rigs to catch triggerfish and snapper. This system of stack fishing almost guarantees some type of action at every spot you fish.

On the day we fished with Walker, usually with six people fishing, three or four would remain hooked-up at any one time during the day. Some of the fish you usually catch in three-story fishing include: red snapper, gray snapper, mutton snapper, yellowtail snapper, triggerfish, amberjack, king mackerel and cobia. On our day in the Gulf of Mexico, my party and I caught numbers of stacked-up fish all day. We went into port with a good catch that produced plenty of delicious-tasting fillets after a fun day of fellowshipping and fishing.

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 (800) 745-7263 or www.gulfshores.com.