We fish for Spanish Mackerel mostly on charter boats in Orange Beach by dragging lines behind the boat with small spoons and multi colored straws attached to planers that help get the lures down to just below the surface where they can easily be found by the spanish. Most of the time charter boats pull a variety of lures ranging from a skirted cigar minnow on a flat line way behind the boat. We also put out number 1 planers with straw rigs some 50 yards behind the boat. We also put number 2 planers out with a little larger spoons (about 3 inches) with bright pink or green coatings on them and pull them about 25 yards behind the boat. The larger, number 3 planers are only about 15 yards behind the boat and they dig deep under the water where larger fish like King Mackerel can find them. Sometimes the larger Spanish can easily eat the largest of our baits. Generally speaking, the smaller and best eating Spanish eat smaller baits. We usually troll the lures at 5 to 6 knots and we catch them right off the beach, all the way out to 6 miles offshore. Sometimes the bite is not good going one direction, like into the waves and the fish bite better when the Orange Beach Fishing Charters are trolling with the waves. The best advice we can give you is to zig zag and change up your lures if they are not biting. When they do bite, see what color they hit and look at the cloud cover and see if shade from the sky effects the bite. Sometimes, on a cloudy day, darker colors on the lures work better and on bright days, bright lures like pink and sky blue works best.