The Charter Boat MAR-T

An eight hour trip during Red Snapper season will allow us to get a little more picky with the size of the fish we keep. The legal size limit is 16" and you are allowed two fish per person. On this trip we can easily bump the size limit up to 20". Or, keep any size fish you prefer, so long as they are legal sized. You do not want to get too picky. We can run out to about 15 or 18 miles from Dauphin Island Lighthouse and hit a variety of spots and hopefully bag some beeliners, triggerfish, lane snapper, grouper, king mackeral and anything else we can encounter along the way like dolphin (Mahi-Mahi), or cobia (Ling). Of course, we can only keep what the Federal Government says we can keep, so at times, certain fish will have to be thrown back.

When it is not Red Snapper season, we can typically lock in on triggerfish and beeliners. If grouper are in season, we can try for those as well. The MAR-T really isn't fast enough to run out to areas where you catch legal sized Amberjack, (30" to fork), on every drop in an 8 hour round trip. That takes a 10 or 12 hour trip.

The MAR-T has 4 forward bunks and ample heat and air conditioning to make up to 4 anglers comfortable on an overnight excursion. By Coast Guard rules, I have to include a second licensed captain for any trips over twelve hours. We also have to put a 72 gallon fuel bladder on the bow and add extra fish boxes to hold all of the ice, (and hopefully fish), we'll need to be out that long. We would typically leave out sometime around noon on day one. We'll hit some spots to catch live bait on the way out and should anything good and fishy pop up along the way, fish it. We'll spend the evening trolling for big pelagics, (tuna and wahoo), and begin jigging and/or chunking for tuna all night. We can get out to 72 miles past the Dauphin Island Lighthouse around the floating oil production platforms: Petronius, Marlin, Ram Powell and Neptune (The Beer Can). When we locate the best bite, we'll stay the night at one of those. Just before first light we'll put a trolling spread out and see what the morning bite gives us. We'll fish our way back to the north and target the reef dwellers you want. These include: Vermillian Snapper (beeliners), Scamp, white snapper, triggerfish, amberjack and red snapper, of which we can keep a two day limit. We should arrive back at the dock aroiund 5 P.M of the second day.

This trip requires a bit of planning, so it needs to be discussed a few weeks in advance to line everything up. It is a trip that you will get the opportunity to see and experience things few get to. The weather will play the biggest role. We will err on the side of caution before heading this far into the Gulf of Mexico for such an extended stay.