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Just curious if anybody has any tips for wade/surf fishing around Dauphin Island, AL. We will be down sometime today or tomorrow and staying through Saturday. Being from good ol' Kentucky, I have few experiences fishing saltwater but I have done some research to see what to target. Just not sure what types/sizes of baits would work best for these species/time of year (speckled trout, flounder, redfish, etc.). Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Dauphin Island is my favorite place on the beach. Was down there last 4th of July with the family. I only fished the beach in front of the house on the west end. For trout I used what I throw for hybrids, a 3 in. white with dark specks grub on a 1/4 oz. plain lead head jig. One thing that I learned is after 4 to 6 hits, the trout would tear up the grub so bad you would have to replace it. Caught enough trout for supper for 8 of us. Got some small redfish, along with trout, shark and other fish on live shrimp. Frozen shrimp was mostly cats, sharks and rays. SIL boyfriend fished around the fort and a couple of other places but had better luck on the beach. The only place that had live shrimp was across the bridge going back toward Mobile. The Ship & Shore store has all kinds of tackle in the back. Hope you have a good trip. Planning on going down there in October.
Live shrimp under a popping cork, or a DOA if you can't get any live bait.
Beautiful place. In the surf, use a pompano jig tipped with a bit of shrimp. Everytime you pull the jig you want it to kick up sand along the bottom. As for jigging speed, as good rule of thumb for someone that is not used to fishing salt is to jig it about twice as fast and twice as far as you think you should. Good luck.
Thanks for the replies folks. Left the same on the Alabama board and got nothing. Too bad I left on the 2nd and didn't get a chance to see any of the responses before I went off the grid. Yeah, they have service, but my phone was left in the beach house for most of the time since it was vacation. Did get some southern kingfish, blue runner, croakers and saw a few others with stuff like baby sharks and smaller stingrays. Awesome trip. Fishing was just a bonus. We parasailed, went on a dolphin watch cruise that also was the night of the island fireworks show, visited the estuarium, fort gaines and stuff like that. Did manage a little fishing time a couple days and had a blast. Got a lot of bites from sea specks pretty much burning a 3.5" lake fork swimbait on a heavy under-spin jighead. I was fishing slow and trying all sorts of baits and retrieves before I decided to speed up. As soon as I sped up the hits came. Then I had to learn not to cross their eyes, because i kept pulling the bait out. I had read that a lot of the fish there had hard mouths and teeth, so I was really raring back on 'em. Took some info from the captain of one of the boats we went out on to figure out that the fish I had been hooking had kind of a thin jaw area. Did a little better after the advice but would liked to have known before I let so many get away without a kiss and picture. Thanks again and I will be back next year around the same time only armed with a little more knowledge of the fish and maybe a little more time spent fishing. Thanks Revo for the quick reply but when I checked the site from my phone before we left I didn't see it yet. Probably should have refreshed it or something.
From my experiences, speckled trout have paper-mouths, you can't set the hook that hard. Redfish seem to be tougher, but weren't as plentiful where we were fishing at.