Fishing the U.S.S.Alabama

This Sunday afternoon, I decided to fish a sea wall near Battleship Park in Mobile, Al. where the U.S.S. Alabama has been moored for the past several years.

I have caught a variety of fish in this area and since it was a nice sunny day, it seemed to be the thing to do on a lazy day. 

I had some frozen shrimp in the back part of the freezer that I almost forgot about, so I tossed it into a bucket, pulled out a pair of light spinning rods and headed to the causeway. 

The park was where a boat show was hosted last weekend but I was surprised to see a lot of visitors in the area today.    As I crossed the bridge and pulled into a grassy area next to the seawall, several people were dunking baits, mostly shrimp, for anything that would bite. 

I parked, pulled out my rods, and baited up the small 1/0 Eagle Claw bait holder hook with a small piece of dead shrimp. 

I had a small 1/4 oz. barrel sinker for weight above a small barrel swivel and about 16 inches of fluorocarbon leader as terminal tackle.   The idea was to catch some small Croakers for bait and rig them on my larger surf rig. 

 It was windy and the water was choppy but I still managed to make some decent casts into the wind out from the wall. 

After losing 3 or 4 pieces of bait to some sneaky fish, I managed to catch a Croaker that was too big to use for bait, so I offered it to the guy fishing next to me who quickly accepted it for dinner.   

I caught two more fish that I gave away before picking up a small croaker for bait. 

I hooked the small croaker through the snout with a 5/0 Lazer sharp live bait hook and tossed it out as far as I could into the wind.   I was using a 10 foot Fierce III spinning outfit with an 8000 reel spooled with 20 pound Cajun Red line with a standard sliding sinker rig. 

While I waited for a redfish or shark to hit the croaker, I continued catching Croaker of all sizes until a redfish nailed a small piece of shrimp.    

At first I thought I hooked into a larger croaker, but the fish had some shoulders and took off as soon as it got close to the seawall. I finally landed the fish and took a couple of quick pics before returning it to the Gulf of Mexico.   

The guys fishing next to me thought I was nuts for releasing the fish but it was too close to the slot to take a chance to keep and last week I was checked for my out of state fishing license by an Alabama Fish and Game officer, so back it went. 

One of the guys fishing next to me really wanted the fish, and when I caught a second red about the same size, he just glared at me when I released the second one.   

Another fisherman in a red pickup pulled up, set out a couple of rods and started talking to me about the bite.   He told me that the best time to fish this area was on either an incoming or outgoing tide.   

He said nothing much would be hitting during a slack tide, so when the bite slacked off, I packed up my gear and headed back to my apartment. 

I managed to catch a couple of reds and about a dozen Croaker of various sizes on the old frozen shrimp. and I never had a bite on the one live Croaker bait, so I let that guy back into the Gulf to grow up. 

The fishing here is not even close to the fishing I'm used to around the Space Coast, but if there is water around and I have a rod with me, I'm going fishing. 

Till next time, Tight Lines.