Get All of Mississippi’s Saltwater Fish Now in August – Inshore, Offshore and In-Between
Day 3: Fish Inshore and Offshore for Marlin, Snapper, Tarpon and Others in August at Mississippi’s Gulf Coast with Captain Bobby Williams
 For more than 50 years, Captain Bobby Williams has charter fished out of Biloxi, Mississippi. Williams has three sons, which led him to dub his fourth charter boat, “Three Sons IV.” He’s fished before and after storms in good and bad conditions. Williams is a do-it-all captain and knows the rocks, the reefs and the rigs where blue marlin, wahoo, dolphin (mahi mahi), magnum-sized yellowfin tuna, redfish, king mackerel, tarpon, amberjack and snapper hold. Williams tells us where he finds fish in August and how he catches them. Although Williams fishes for reef fish and trolls for redfish, he also loves to fish offshore for marlin and other big-game fish at this time of year.
 “To catch marlin and other species of big-game fish, you have to locate the right water,” Williams reports. “I prefer to find a riff with cobalt-blue water on one side of the boat and green water on the other side. I like to fish for Spanish mackerel using Ilander lures with ballyhoo behind the bait. I prefer to fish around floater rigs, if I can locate water there. Blue marlin are fickle fish. I’ve tagged as many as four in a single day or fished an entire week without seeing one. During the July before Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005, I tagged 10 blue marlin in 14 days and had 2 more on the line. When the water gets warm, and the baitfish start coming-in, you can expect to catch numbers of blue marlin. The biggest blue marlin I’ve ever caught on my boat weighed more than 700 pounds. So, July and August are great months to catch blue marlin. When fishing for marlin, we also can catch wahoo, tuna and dolphin that weigh up to 50 pounds. On one particular 3-day fishing trip, we caught 40 dolphins, each weighing over 40 pounds. I caught my largest wahoo, which weighed 82 pounds, southwest of the pass just south of the Midnight Lumps. On an average day fishing offshore, we generally can catch dolphins and wahoo.
 “This month, the red snapper bite still should be really good, but red snapper season is closed, so that’s a catch-and-release type of program. Too, this month we usually don’t catch many grouper. On bottom trips, we’ll catch several types of snapper, amberjacks and often one or two cobia. If the past dictates the present, this year in August we’ll catch plenty of amberjacks about 75-miles out. When targeting amberjacks, cobia and snapper, we’ll fish with live bait. My favorite live bait to use is hardtails (blue runners), which we catch around the rigs. Using these big baits, we often can catch amberjacks weighing from 30- to 50-pounds each. Too, we’ve caught nice-sized tuna offshore, weighing over 200 pounds, fishing these big baits. During our 8-hour trips, we troll for redfish and catch blacktip sharks behind shrimp boats, since the weather has warmed-up in July, the king mackerel bite in August will become very strong.
 “Also, this month, we’ll have tarpon migrating through our area along with the redfish. The tarpon start coming through here at the end of July and remain in the region until the end of August. We usually find tarpon between Ship Island and the Chandeleur Islands. We’ll see numbers of tarpon rolling around the pods of baitfish, but the most tarpon we’ve ever caught in one year is five. When fishing for tarpon, we prefer to use spoons. However, getting a spoon into the bony mouth of the tarpon is hard. Although we have hooked tarpon with live bait, most of the time we catch tarpon while trolling spoons for other species. In state waters, anglers can keep several redfish per person, so we’ll troll around Horn Island, Ship Island and Chandeleur Islands.” To fish with Captain Bobby Williams, call (228) 392-8243, or go to his website, www.threesonscharters.com, or email ThreeSonsIV@aol.com.
 To learn more about catching fish at Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, order John E. Phillips’ new Kindle eBook, “Fishing Mississippi’s Gulf Coast and Visitor’s Guide,” by going to www.amazon.com/kindle, and typing in the name of the book to purchase. Or, you can get a free Kindle app to use to download the book to your iPad, SmartPhone or computer.
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