Fishing Opportunities

In Gulf Shores & Orange Beach

October 1, 2025

It’s never too early to plan your first or next trip to Alabama’s Beaches. Part of that planning could be trying your luck at the numerous fishing opportunities available on our coast and in the Gulf. Many guests may have visited the area but limited their activities to relaxing by the water and eating delicious seafood. Others may be coming to our sugar-sand beaches for the first time.

Adding fishing to your beach vacation itinerary is easy on our shores. If you’re an experienced angler, just bring along whatever bass fishing or walleye fishing tackle you already have. If you’ve got tackle to handle a big muskie, bring that too. You can take advantage of several kinds of coast fishing with just that kind of tackle with a 12- to 15-pound test line.

Types of Fishing on Alabama's Beaches

Surf Fishing

The surf on Alabama’s sugar sand beaches is where anglers can target many species within casting distance of the shoreline. Florida pompano is a favorite species targeted by surf fishermen, but numerous other species can be hooked with live and artificial baits, especially FishBites. Whiting, a relatively small but tasty silverfish, run the sandbars on the beach foraging on crustaceans dislodged by the wave action. However, the surf has numerous other species that often come close to shore, including big redfish, black drum, bluefish, jack crevalle, and, in low light conditions, speckled trout.

Inshore Fishing

If you brought your own boat, you want to try inshore fishing for redfish, speckled trout, and white trout in the bays, like Perdido Bay, Wolf Bay, Bon Secour Bay or Little Lagoon. Live shrimp is available at numerous tackle shops in the area, including J&M Tackle, Sam’s Stop and Shop, and Hooked Up Bait and Tackle. If you want to try artificial, try shrimp imitations under a popping cork or minnow imitation baits.

For those without a boat, many inshore guides can treat you to a day on Alabama’s coastal waters, and they know all the local hotspots for trout, redfish, and flounder.

Group of people on a fishing charter near Perdido Pass in Orange Beach

Nearshore Fishing

Nearshore fishing is heading out in the Gulf but keeping the shoreline within view, targeting species like king mackerel and Spanish mackerel. If you have a Gulf-worthy boat, you can troll spoons, Halco or Clark, in an area with spoons fluttering at different depths from just below the surface to 5 or 6 feet deep. Large crankbaits can also be trolled, but sometimes the fish will get a little finicky and want natural baits, like live hardtails (blue runners), finger mullet, and menhaden or fresh frozen cigar minnows or ribbonfish (silver eels).

Offshore Fishing

Numerous charter boats also offer reasonably priced, four-hour trolling trips for Spanish, kings, and bonito. You might get lucky and hook into a bull redfish that will strip drag and test your tackle.

Heading farther into the Gulf’s offshore waters, Alabama’s Beaches offers one of the largest fleets in the area that will head out 15 to 30 miles to fish for reef species in Alabama’s vast and unmatched artificial reef zone that covers more than 1,000 square miles. Depending on the season, the target species could be Alabama’s iconic red snapper, amberjack, triggerfish, and vermilion snapper. Alabama’s charter fleet has vessels, called six-packs, that accommodate six anglers or larger boats that carry more than 20. Several head boats offer walk-on day trips to catch reef fish species.

Charter Fishing Trips

The ultimate trip into the Gulf is an overnight or three-day fishing trip on the numerous multi-passenger charter boats that offer a variety of accommodations that make the trip not only comfortable with ample food, bunks, and air conditioning but also result with the fish box filled to the brim. On those trips, the boat captains usually head to some of their favorite spots to catch reef fish like snapper and grouper before heading to the deepwater petroleum platforms to troll or live-bait fish for big game species like yellowfin tuna, mahi, wahoo, and billfish species. Anglers who make these excursions deep into the Gulf and watch the sunrise while catching fish return to the dock, talking about a trip of a lifetime.