Summertime Fishing on the Gulf Coast
: Deep Water and Big-Game Trips with Captain Chip Day
Editor’s Note: From catching marlin at the Nipple, the Spur and the Elbow to catching king mackerel and Spanish mackerel within sight of the pearly-white beaches and the breaking waves of Orange Beach, Alabama, you can do it all on a six-passenger boat. Today Charles “Chip” Day, captain of the “Chipper’s Clipper” charter boat, based at Zeke’s Marina in Orange Beach, will tell us the advantages of booking a trip on a six-passenger boat.
Question: Chip, what type of trips are the 10- to 12-hour trips?
Day: If our party wants to catch amberjacks and grouper, as well as snapper, they generally go on at least a 10- or a 12-hour trip. On these trips, we go out to deep water and remain there all day, catching group, scamp, amberjacks and big red snapper. Most of the time we catch pretty-good-sized red snapper while we’re grouper fishing because we use big baits to fish for grouper.
Question: What type of baits do you use?
Day: We primarily fish with live baits, like white grunts (locally known as ruby lip grunts), vermilion snapper or blue runners. When we finish fishing for grouper, everyone on the boat also will have their limit of red snapper. If they don’t, we stop on some artificial reefs on the way into port and finish-out our limit. On a good day, we’ll catch five or six grouper, a good number of scamps, our limit of red snapper and some triggerfish and white snapper. We often can catch amberjacks on the same hard bottom where we catch the grouper and the snapper. When you’re fishing live bait on these deep-water bottom spots, you’ll catch grouper, scamp, amberjacks and occasionally a big triggerfish. We also keep a drift line out while we’re bottom fishing and often take big king mackerel, dolphin and wahoo.
Question: Are there any other types of trips you run?
Day: During the month of June, all our big-game fish are in, including white marlin, blue marlin, sailfish, dolphin and wahoo. While we’re bottom fishing in that 200-feet-deep water, we’re not too far from the 100-Fathom Curve. So, you can have a bottom trip and a trolling trip combined, or a trip strictly for marlin, sailfish, wahoo, dolphin and tuna.
Question: Chip, how good are the marlin and the sailfish angling at that 100- Fathom Curve?
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