Awesome saltwater fishing: Alabama’s coastal drilling platforms offer a mix of inshore and offshore fisheries.
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Distant oil and gas production platforms scattered about the northern Gulf of America are celebrated producers of big gamefish like yellowfin tuna and blue marlin. But there’s another side to this fishery, one much closer to shore.
Shallow platforms within a few miles of ports like Mobile Bay are great targets for mixed-bag fishing using light tackle. Steel legs of these “rigs” drop trellis-like through the water column, providing growing surfaces for algae, barnacles, corals and other primary producers. Bait schools gather in these areas—and predators follow. The close rigs represent structure with the same fish appeal as docks, bridges, oyster bars and other familiar features inshore. In fact, the same rods and lures used for redfish and trout in bays and rivers produce memorable catches at these near rigs.
Captain Frank Harwell, a Mobile County fishing guide, keeps the rigs around Mobile Bay as an option for his charters. He’s an expert in all the fisheries of the bay area, from the fabled winter trout and reds in the delta, to the summer tripletail bite. The rigs, he knows, are as near to a rod-bending, cooler-thumpin’ guarantee as anything anywhere.
Fish On! Nearshore Drilling Rigs
On a late April day with flat calm seas, we left Fort Morgan on Harwell’s 24-foot Contender with a 300-hp Yamaha and ran about 3 miles offshore. “We’ve got a number of rigs in the 3- to 4-mile range, and then more out at 8 miles,” he said…