Red Snapper Fishing off Fort Morgan, Alabama

Red snapper fishing on the artificial reefs off Fort Morgan, Alabama, comes down to putting a bait on the right side of the right structure. Capt. Vlad Moldoveanu fishes the west end of the Alabama coast, where the state has dropped thousands of reefs across a shallow mud bottom and not many boats run out. In 100 to 135 feet of the Gulf of Mexico, he finds the fish on his sonar, sorts keepers from the small ones, and keeps moving until the bigger snapper show.

Where Red Snapper Hold on Alabama’s Artificial Reefs

Red snapper are structure fish, and the accepted advice is to fish on the reef, not the open bottom. Vlad calls the mud between reefs a desert. On the reef, he finds the snapper on the up-current side, not down-current where most anglers expect them, and they shift as the current changes.

The bigger fish sit a little off the structure, away from the small ones. Taller super pyramids give the fish more habitat and shelter, and they hold more snapper, and bigger snapper, than standard pyramids.

Why Live Bait Pulls Bigger Red Snapper

Most anglers agree that live bait catches bigger snapper, and Vlad explains why. Cut squid draws every fish on the reef, so the small ones reach it first. A big snapper won’t waste energy on small bait and may have seen a line before, but a live hardtail looks natural enough to take.

Amberjack want live bait too and care less for dead bait, so when Vlad wants snapper and not jacks, he switches back to dead bait. The article on the best bait for red snapper breaks down every option.

How Do You Know Red Snapper Are Feeding?

When red snapper rise up off the structure on the screen, they are feeding, and you’ve found a good spot. Fish lying tight to the reef take more work. Vlad calls each drop off the sonar and never lets anyone drop while the boat is moving.

If a bait goes five seconds without a bite, he has the angler drop it deeper. Bumping the boat a few feet can put the bait in front of a bigger fish. His sonar reads for shallow water bottom fishing show what those marks look like.

Fishing Red Snapper Spots That Charter Boats Work

By late August, Vlad’s charter spots have been fished hard all summer. His answer is to take two or three fish from a reef and move on. A reef stripped of snapper is slow to come back, and he says snapper draw more snapper.

Chicken coop reefs break down in about eight years, so he checks his spots instead of trusting old notes. A reef he marked for small fish one year can hold good ones the next.

Inside the Red Snapper Fishing Video

• Reading snapper, amberjack and grouper marks on shallow Alabama reefs
• Live hardtails, cut squid, knocker rigs and chicken rigs, and when Vlad switches between them
• Releasing undersized red snapper with a dehooker, and when a fish needs a venting tool
• Why Vlad keeps mid-size snapper for the table and lets legal fish go
• The B-liners and triggerfish that share the same reefs as the snapper

Red Snapper Fishing Questions off Fort Morgan

Read the Reef Before You Drop

This video teaches how a working charter captain finds red snapper on crowded shallow reefs and gets past the small fish to the keepers: which side of the reef to fish, when live bait beats squid, and when to move on. Vlad ties the knocker and chicken rigs he fishes here step by step in his video on bottom fishing rigs for red snapper, amberjack and triggerfish.