Captain Frank Harwell watches as Chris Megan puts pressure on a fish hooked by a nearshore oil rig off Fort Morgan, Alabama Gulf Coast.
July 28, 2025
By Jeff Weakley
Distant oil and gas production platforms scattered about the northern Gulf of America are celebrated producers of big gamefish like yellowfin tuna and blue marlin. But there’s another side to this fishery, one much closer to shore.
Shallow platforms within a few miles of ports like Mobile Bay are great targets for mixed-bag fishing using light tackle. Steel legs of these “rigs” drop trellis-like through the water column, providing growing surfaces for algae, barnacles, corals and other primary producers. Bait schools gather in these areas—and predators follow. The close rigs represent structure with the same fish appeal as docks, bridges, oyster bars and other familiar features inshore. In fact, the same rods and lures used for redfish and trout in bays and rivers produce memorable catches at these near rigs.
Captain Frank Harwell, a Mobile County fishing guide, keeps the rigs around Mobile Bay as an option for his charters. He’s an expert in all the fisheries of the bay area, from the fabled winter trout and reds in the delta, to the summer tripletail bite. The rigs, he knows, are as near to a rod-bending, cooler-thumpin’ guarantee as anything anywhere.
Nearshore drilling rigs are prime destinations for Alabama anglers. Fish On! Nearshore Drilling Rigs On a late April day with flat calm seas, we left Fort Morgan on Harwell’s 24-foot Contender with a 300-hp Yamaha and ran about 3 miles offshore. “We’ve got a number of rigs in the 3- to 4-mile range, and then more out at 8 miles,” he said.
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Harwell’s boat, a 24 Sport model with forward seating, is set up with a Simrad NSX sonar/plotter combo and a Minn-Kota iPilot trolling motor with Spot Lock. This combo makes it convenient to locate fish and stay in position.
“I like to make a circle around the rig,” he said, “See where most of the fish are and get upcurrent of that. Every day is different, the water clarity and current can be different, the predators different.”
Red snapper are abundant on the nearshore rigs. Alabama 2025 recreational red season runs May 23 through June 30, followed by 4-day weekends starting July 4 until the quota is met. See outdooralabama.com for details on Snapper Check and for-hire (charter) dates. It would become quickly clear that today’s predator was Spanish mackerel. In the shade of the first drilling platform we came to, the Gulf was a healthy-looking color, a khaki green cast but clear down several feet. Harwell handed each of us 7-foot spinning rods, some with hooks and splitshot sinkers, others with jigs. Soon we were into mackerel. Chris Megan hooked up immediately, followed by Conner Allison, then Jess McGlothlin.
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“These Spanish just started coming in,” Harwell said. “We get them in April and May, and then summer can be hit and miss, but they come back strong again in September. In the last few years we’ve seen a lot of 3-, 4- and 5-pound fish.”
“We get keeper kings around these rigs, too,” he added. “They’ll burn that drag up!”
Rig Fishing with Shrimp Live shrimp, Harwell explained, is the catch-all bait at the close rigs. “Works all the time,” he said. “I fish them on a 2/0 kahle hook and a small weight, and I go with light line, 30- or 40-pound monofilament leader.”
Lures can also be productive. “I’ll sometimes fish a gold Acme Kastmaster spoon—everything here hits that,” Harwell said. “We even catch snapper on those. The other lure I like is a ¾-ounce white, pink or chartreuse bucktail jig—I have a friend who makes them for me; he adds a little strip of Mylar flash. I think that flash makes a difference—we often see the mackerel spitting up glass minnows, and I think flash is what they cue in on.”
Live shrimp are prime coastal Alabama baits for snapper, mackerel, sheepshead, cobia and more. Our free-drifting shrimp were getting lots of mackerel hits, but I figured a jig worked quickly through the water column would, too. I started catching mackerel on Harwell’s glass minnow bucktail. I showed my friend Jess—a fly fisher from Montana—how to manipulate a spinning outfit to animate a jig. “If you feel a bite or see a flash behind your jig, keep whipping the rodtip and reel even faster, to get the line tight,” I advised.
We had a few cutoffs on the mono leader, but we all landed a bunch of fish. Par for the course, as the captain explained.
“We’ll lose a few fish, but I’ve found if I put on steel leaders, the bites go down to like 10 percent,” said Harwell. “In the past I used fluorocarbon leader, but I’ve found the 30- or 40-pound mono works just as well, and costs a lot less.”
Allowing a shrimp to reach bottom at 45 feet, Chris Megan got tangled up with a stubborn foe, obviously not a mackerel. Up came a nice red snapper. We ended up catching several, but the season wasn’t open.
“Early in red snapper season, we usually get some good ones, 20 to 22 inches, some bigger,” Harwell explained. “Mangroves can be all over the rigs, too. Sometimes the best snapper fishing is out away from the rig, not right on the structure. I like seeing a good school on the sonar—if they’re down within a third of the way from bottom, they’re usually snapper. In the last few days, if I’ve marked fish, it’s been mostly bonito, bluefish or good Spanish.
Spanish mackerel put up a great fight on light tackle. This one took a pink bucktail jig. “Like I said, every day is different—sometimes it seems there’s nothing but blacktip sharks; some days we get African pompano.”
I prompted Harwell for more intel on the mix of fish at these structures.
“Sometimes big lookdowns get on there, all over the rigs. Like in late summer, when we really start getting the jellyfish in. The lookdowns are really good to eat, and so are spadefish, but you have to have a sizable fish. Otherwise you have a fillet so thin you can read a newspaper through it.”
Jess McGlothin hoists one of her mackerel catches on Capt. Frank Harwell’s boat. Given the northern Gulf’s reputation for cobia, and cobia’s reputation for lingering near structure, I figured these rigs must attract a few. Harwell confirmed that to be the case.
“One day in May, we had a 40-pound cobia swim up to us. Everyone said ‘Hey that’s a shark!’ I said ‘No that’s a cobia, throw!’ We definitely get a few out here.”
At the last rig we fished, a bit outside the mackerel zone, we felt sure Jess had a big cobia on. The fish peeled line off her reel and arced rapidly toward the safety of the rig. It wrapped the line around one of the rough steel legs and broke off.
Close to Mobile Bay, a huge, rich estuary fed by many rivers, the Alabama rigs host a lot of what are traditionally thought of as inshore species. One look at the barnacle-encrusted supports of a drilling platform and sheepshead immediately come to mind.
Sonar on Capt. Frank Harwell’s boat lights up with fish, likely Spanish mackerel and red snapper. “We get sheepshead real good in February, March and April,” said Harwell. “Guys like to catch them on fiddler crabs—I just go catch them on live shrimp with a ¾-ounce knocker rig, fishing like 12 to 15 feet down. If you go too far down, you’ll just catch big old snapper. The sheepshead are up in the water column.
“We’ll catch some flounder at the rigs, too—I’ve caught them as far as 8 miles offshore, but it’s closed in November when they spawn. We’ll catch some in the spring, before they head inshore.
“At some of the rigs there are a lot of white trout, including some 16- to 18-inch fish that are slobs for that species. In the fall, through Thanksgiving, they’re out there. If someone wants a fish fry, we can stack up white trout like cordwood. We did that recently with a group of boys from the Bayou La Batre High School Fishing Team—they caught so many!”
There are rigs inside Mobile Bay, too—a few were visible as we rounded the corner on the way out and back into the Fort Morgan boat ramp. I asked what they might hold.
Columbia PFG Castback TC shoe offers grip and stability as Jess McGlothlin moves around the deck to follow a mackerel.“There are inshore guides who spend their entire summer catching trout around the bay rigs; some bull reds and jack crevalle, too,”Harwell said. “Around the bay rigs, a live freelined croaker is the best bait. Shrimp on a slip cork does good, too.”
Talking to Harwell, it was clear the Alabama nearshore rigs serve as valuable waypoints in the local fishery. “If there’s been a strong bite, you might see guides out of the same marina running to the same spot, and next thing you know there’s 10 boats,” he said. “I like to be at least a few casts away from anybody else, so I’ll move to the other side, or try a different rig.”
Having several spots to try obviously keeps the excitement factor up. You’re always wondering what’s lurking in the shade of the next platform, or holed up in the honeycombed, reef-like structure.
“I hate that Congress passed that law that when the rig is no longer functioning it must be removed,” Harwell commented. “There’s great ecosystems around these. We sometimes dive them, and you can see all the coral growth, the baitfish, everything! At reef council meetings they’ve talking about dynamiting those rigs—I’m all for leaving them out there!
Conner Allison’s spadefish is returned to the nutrient-rich waters of coastal Alabama. “Alabama has a program where they’ve toppled some of the old rigs and dragged them to reef zones offshore. I feel we should just leave them in place, there’s so much live growth around them, they’re so easy to fish.”
Gulf Shores Trip Planner Sand Island Light is a prominent historical navigation marker at the mouth of Mobile Bay. Alabama doesn’t have a long Gulf coast, but it’s very diverse. The eastern side of Mobile Bay terminates in a Gulf-front of sugar-white sand and water that’s often very clear—as in Caribbean clear. The west side, at Dauphin Island, tends to be tea-colored. Both have fishing appeal, but over the years family tourism—and attendant infrastructure—has gravitated eastward. Gulf Shores and Orange Beach offer robust lodging, dining, charter fishing and general activity options. We stayed in a modern beachfront rental home a few miles from Perdido Pass; each bedroom had its own bathroom and there was a nice deck with pool out back overlooking the Gulf. Beachball Properties (beachball.com ; 251-968-8896) found the home for us.
Fishing guide services are numerous. Among them:
For more about the area, visit gulfshores.com
Atlantic spadefish are sometimes caught on shrimp. Big ones are pretty good to eat. Gearing Up Coastal Alabama in summer is hot and sunny, with a chance for torrential rain squalls. It pays to cover up with lightweight, sun-protective clothing but also come prepared with quality foul weather gear.
On our trip with Captain Harwell, we field-tested some great new apparel from Columbia PFG.
Women’s Shadowcast Zero Omni Freeze Zero Sweat-activated cooling, vents for air movement, snap-down collar. Rated UPF 40, men’s and women’s sizing.
PFG Wildcast Sun Shirt UPF 50, Omnifreeze cooling and wicking, men’s and women’s sizing.
PFG Force XXII ODX Jacket and Bib OutDry technology, seam-sealed, breathable, waterproof—and soft and flexible for all-day fishing. Adjustable sleeves, zippered chest and hand pockets, snug-fitting, drawcord adjustable hood.
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