This issue’s cover story looks at the burgeoning fly-fishing scene in Coastal Alabama. Down here fly fishing has been a niche activity at best — and only recently has it started to take root and gain popularity.
Jimbo Meador, the angler and eco-tourism guide who seems as natural to the area as a blue heron, is the progenitor of the local scene. He is also a lord of the fly on the national stage, especially with respect to kayak fishing. No man steps in the same river twice, and Jimbo has stepped in thousands of them. In his lifetime he’s been witness to drastic changes in Mobile Bay, mostly for the worse. For a naturalist and dedicated angler, that ain’t good.
For many, fishing is a sacred act (and that includes bait-fishing with a cane pole). Fishing connects family members across generations; it connects us with the natural world; and, in some cases, it connects us with something greater than ourselves.
But these connections can get disrupted, even to the point of extinction.
In late July, Mobile Baykeeper enlisted your support to help end the dumping of dredge spoil into Mobile Bay. Ninety million cubic yards of mud is scheduled to be dumped back into the Bay over the next twenty years — as part of a cycle of continuous maintenance dredging for the deepened ship channel. Make no mistake, this mud can be moved elsewhere, and we’re fighting to make sure that happens.
Additionally, our waters are under threat from periodic sewage overflows, perhaps most notably in Prichard, where there exists a water crisis to rival Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, which you can read about in this issue.
We’re also fighting to protect critical wetlands adjacent to a planned development in Rabbit Creek. And lastly, we beat on in our efforts to ensure that 21 million tons of coal ash does not forever sit leaking by the Mobile River and threaten our Bay downstream.
You can get involved with these efforts and more by going to MobileBaykeeper.org/take-action It’s been said that, in a democracy, you get the leaders you deserve. The same could be said about the state of our waters — we get what we deserve. Thank you for reading and defending Mobile Bay.
— Caine O’Rear, CURRENTS editor
THE TUG IS THE DRUG Fly fishing guide Blake Walters (pictured right) and writer Sam Wilkes angle for redfish in Weeks Bay. A place with a relatively young history with the sport, Coastal Alabama does not come first to mind when talking about fly fishing. Far from the rippling mountain streams or the turquoise flats of the Bahamas, our area presents its own unique traits and challenges. Read more about the local fly-fishing scene on page 26. Cover photo by Courtney Mason Hilley
EDITOR:
ART DIRECTOR:
COPY-EDITOR:
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER:
CAINE O’REAR
COURTNEY SPENCER
WESLEY WYATT
SHALELA DOWDY, VIRGINIA KINNIER, CADE KISTLER, SUSAN ROUILLIER, SAM WILKES, NICK WILLIAMS
COURTNEY MASON HILLEY
FOR ALL INQUIRIES:
Please contact Mobile Baykeeper at 251-433-4229, or e-mail Caine O’Rear at corear@mobilebaykeeper.org.
MOBILEBAYKEEPER.ORG
A Delta Tradition
FOR THEO MIDDLETON, THE RUNAMUCK INN IS A TREASURE THAT SPANS GENERATIONS
by VIRGINIA KINNIER
Each time Theo Middleton pulls up to the boat ramp on the Causeway, his past is already there waiting to greet him. The commemorative sign over the ramp bears a familiar name, his dad’s, and the Stauter he puts in the water is a family heirloom only found on the coast, a gift from his grandfather to his dad in 1988, the same year Theo was born. And each time he idles away from the shore, he turns his boat in the same direction his dad and his grandfather did, on the same six-mile cruise upriver to the Runamuck Inn.
Founded in 1955 by Theo’s grandfather and four of his buddies, the Runamuck Inn sits thirteen feet off the ground on the north end of an island once known as Raft River Island. Accessible only by boat in the Tensaw River-Delta, the island itself is about 25 acres, depending on the tide, and offers its visitors a great view of passing boats and sunsets across the downtown Mobile skyline. The group leased the land until 2003, when they purchased it from Coastal Land Trust, Inc., and renamed it Runamuck Island. The camp took a beating in 2004 from Hurricane Ivan, and Katrina delivered the final blow a year later. In 2006 the group was able to rebuild the camp into what it is today.
“We were lucky enough to have a crew of skilled laborers help us rebuild, but we would not be where we are today without our dedicated members,” Theo explains. “From paperwork to design to construction crew transportation to and from the camp, it was a total group effort.”
Today the camp consists of 1100 square feet of plywood floors and walls, with swinging screen doors on both ends of a long shotgun hallway that runs through the heart of the building, providing a much-needed avenue of air flow. There are two bunk rooms, a full bathroom, and a kitchen. The camp runs on rainwater and fuel brought by boat that powers the generator. Provisions arrive in
loaded ice chests, and when the ice runs out, it’s time to head home.
“I’ve been coming to the camp since I was in diapers — a lot earlier than my mom would have preferred,” Theo says with a laugh. “It’s not true camping, but it’s as close as I’ll get.”
While it may sound a bit isolating, the owners of various camps in the Delta treat each other as true neighbors, waving across stretches of water just like streets.
“We try to develop relationships with other camp owners and members,” Theo explains. “It builds morale, and it’s always nice to look out for each other, whether it’s towing a boat or bringing oil to someone who’s out, building karma with each other, because it all comes back. One of our members even organizes a poker run among camps.”
Away from the camps, the river turns into narrow creeks lined with moss-covered cypress trees, and the wildlife is endless. “We see everything — ospreys, alligators, frogs, crickets, and the most fun thing to spot, bald eagles,” Theo says. “There are unlimited opportunities for hunting, fishing, frogging, etc.”
And while some may criticize Mobile for its lack of seasons, Theo believes they just need to spend some time in the Delta, where the seasonal changes are drastic.
“In the summer, the lotus blooms are incredible to see,” Theo says. “And you will always find a big crowd at Gravine Island, the redneck riviera of the Delta, where a large white beach has formed due to dredging. The water is shallow and warm, and it’s some of the best people watching you’ll find. In the fall, the waters are even busier with cooler temperatures and hunters. The fall and spring are usually when I visit the camp the most because the weather is best, but during the colder months, it’s a lot quieter, and that’s when I think it’s the most fun to bring people along to enjoy the area.”
Young Theo with his family near the Runamuck
While he may have his favorite seasons in the Delta, there is one day a week he doesn’t miss.
“On Sundays I’m usually up there from sun up to sun down,” Theo says. “It’s the best way to reset before the work week. It’s really a solemn place for me; I feel the most connected to nature there, and it’s where I feel the closest to God. I go a lot slower on the way home.”
But even at home, he is surrounded by reminders of the Runamuck Inn. When Theo and his wife, Anna, were searching for the perfect name for their new dog, a nod to this special place seemed appropriate, and Muck was born. A few years later, Theo and Anna would name their son after Theo’s namesake, his dad, and his lifeline to the Runamuck Inn.
“In 2011 my dad passed away from cancer, and on the tenth anniversary of his death, we spread his ashes in the Delta,” Theo recalls. “It’s a special place for my family. My grandfather was an OBGYN in town, but he spent a lot of time there. He instilled a love for it in my dad, who then did the same for me. Two years ago I carried on the diaper tradition and took our son, Ted, for his first ride on the river when he was one, the same age as I was on my first ride. I made sure to stop by the bend in the river where we left my dad. I looked up and saw an eagle perched in a tree right above the spot, and I knew my dad was there with us. I laughed and said, ‘Hey Ted, it’s Pop!’”
Following his dad’s death, Theo became the youngest of now eight men who share equal ownership of the camp. And he fully acknowledges what this responsibility means.
“I think we all have concerns for the future of this area,” Theo admits. “Right now I think rising tides are the biggest threat to our island, but thankfully we have great local organizations who care about the Delta. Mobile County Wildlife organizes trash pickups
and builds wooden duck boxes for habitat preservation purposes, and Mobile Baykeeper drives the defense of our waters. I know I need to pull my own weight so that I can pass the camp down to my son, and he can pass it down to his children.”
As the Runamuck Inn nears its 70th birthday, Theo’s son, Ted, now two and a half years old, sits at the helm of the fourth generation to make that same ride upriver. And if he is anything like his dad, his grandfather, or his great grandfather, the Runamuck Inn will be in good hands for years to come.
Theo Middleton and his dog in the Delta. Photos courtesy Theo Middleton
The Miss Caylee on Deer River
The Oldest Shrimp Boat in the Bay
A VISIT WITH DAVID BRYAN AND THE MISS CAYLEE
by CAINE O'REAR
David Bryan is a veteran shrimper of Mobile Bay and the captain of the Miss Caylee, the oldest operating fishing boat in Alabama. Built in 1942, the Miss Caylee is a type of trawler known as a Biloxi lugger. These boats came out of the shipyards in Biloxi in the late 1800s and rose to popularity as the first gas-powered fishing vessels. We recently caught up with David and his wife and business partner, Debra, at their dock on Deer River, where they run Miss Caylee Seafood.
When did you get started as a shrimper?
I started working as a deckhand in 1975 and have been doing it ever since. I was fourteen, fifteen years old, looking for summertime work. I grew up on Hollinger’s Island and it was a thriving industry back in the day. Dog River was full of boats and they was always looking for help. I did it until ’78. Then I went to work in the Gulf on the big boats for three years. In 1981 I bought my first shrimp boat and I’ve been here on my own ever since.
In the late ’70s and ’80s prices were high and fuel and expenses was low. We was getting three times more in 1980 straight off the boat. The way we are now [most shrimpers] have to haul them to Bayou La Batre. Between the increase in imports, the high price of fuel, the cost of equipment, and just keeping your boat up, it’s a constant battle just to stay in business.
Tell me about the Miss Caylee. She’s probably the oldest shrimp boat left in Alabama. She was built in 1942 in Biloxi, Mississippi. Not sure who the builder was. If I had a nickel for everything that's been on it I probably could retire. It’s a lot of work. The people who had it before me done a lot of work to it too. These old lugger boats, there’s not many of them left. I’ve kind of grown fond of old boats. The boat I had before this was built in 1918 and I kept it up until about twenty-five years ago, and I finally had to retire it. This has been my next project. I do all the
repairs myself. Like I said it’s six months of shrimping and another six months of maintenance to keep everything going.
How long is a typical outing and what’s the crew like?
Usually I keep the boat down to a captain and a one-man crew. That way the money’s a little better. The more people you have on the boat, the more you split the crew shares. Nowadays we work in and out every day. We’re a day boat now mainly, so that my wife can come in and keep our products sold. Back in the day we used to make trips to Louisiana and Mississippi … but the prices keep us from going anymore.
I’m getting up in age and like to make things a little easier for me. I’m winding my time down. There are not many young guys coming up behind us – that is one thing. I hate to see that. Used to be people begging you for a job. Now, it’s hard to find anybody that wants to go to work. This ain’t no easy job. It’s about one of the hardest jobs there is in the commercial fishing industry. You have to stay on deck from daylight until dark sometimes. Take a break maybe to get a sandwich. You gotta beat the heat and fight fish, shark bites. It takes a special person to want to be a deckhand on one of the boats. You gotta love it to be able to do it.
A lot of it is the money has gone away from what it used to be. Back when I was a young un, that’s what got me into this business — the money. At 15, 16, the money I was making was unheard of. We’d go catch boatloads of shrimp and all I could think was “Man, look at all this money laying out here.” It used to be real good living. Nowadays, it’s just a living.
What’s the most dangerous thing you’ve seen?
Weather is our biggest fear. It can pop up in a minute. It hadn’t been too many years since we lost one of the best fishermen in Bayou La Batre, Mr. Danny Thompson. Had more sea-time than most people in Bayou La Batre. Got caught in the wrong kind of weath-
er. Big water-spout or a tornado or something hit him, capsized his boat. He was caught in the cabin and died. Deckhand was on the stern and he happened to swim to a rock jetty.
My biggest fear really is keeping everybody safe and getting caught in bad weather. I try to watch it and stay close to home where I don’t get caught in it no more.
I do worry about people falling overboard, but that’s why I keep it down to one man. I can keep track of him. One thing about these old lugger boats is I always got my eye on the crew. Because they’re always up forward in front of me, working.
The biggest problem with the sharks is the bites in our nets. Some days we just get eaten to pieces. We work a half a day and then come in and sew the other half a day just to be able to work again the next day.
What kind of sharks?
ple and everything we catch here comes out of Mobile Bay and mostly the southern end of the Bay. And that way we can keep our product here and dock everyday for people who want to come pick up shrimp.
How has Mobile Bay changed since you got in the business?
“If I had a nickel for everything that's been on this boat I probably could retire.”
Mostly here in the Bay it’s the black-tips and sand sharks and stuff like that.
Where are you harvesting the shrimp?
We work mostly in Mobile Bay. We don’t travel off much anymore because of the expense and cost of going out. We work in and out every day, to keep our product fresh. We have it here fresh for peo-
In the early years in the first part of June we used to catch a lot of what they call the “Brazilian brownies,” the small brown shrimp, and over the years they seemed to have dwindled away and they don’t seem to come in the Bay no more. And we don’t catch them like we used to. We don’t know why but we don’t see the small brownies in June anymore. In the past ten years or so we mainly only target the white shrimp. Most of what we catch are the white shrimp in Mobile Bay and the bigger shrimp and the way the prices are we have to target the bigger white shrimp to have something to sell because there’s no money in catching the small shrimp anymore.
In the earlier years the small brownies used to be worth good money; you could go out and catch a good many every day and make a good day’s work out of it. Nowadays we don’t even see the brownies anymore and if we do the price is so low on them we can’t afford to catch them. It costs more in fuel and ice to catch them than what
Captain David Bryan in the cabin of the Miss Caylee
we get paid for. If there is some, we try to stay away from them and catch these bigger shrimp that we can get paid for.
How big of an issue is pollution for shrimpers?
I don’t think pollution is part of our problem, though it may be some of it. You have sewage spills in the Bay on and off and they need to work on that problem — it can’t help any. Some of the time we have river run-off from the upper Delta … I’m not a biologist, I can’t say how much of that hurts us. Most of the time we get a lot of freshwater, it gets out of here pretty quick.
Right now I think the Bay is pretty healthy. The last month when we was out, you’d catch small juvenile snapper, stone crabs, horseshoe crabs, and plenty of stuff from out in the Gulf which tells me the salinity is up in the Bay and the water is doing good. I don’t ever see the water get so stagnant it runs off our product or any of the sea-life. I believe it stays pretty well flushed out; Mother Nature is good about taking care of itself.
So when you go out, you start trawling at the bottom of the Bay?
We usually leave in the mornings a few hours before daylight and make about a two-hour run where we start fishing that. When it starts cracking daylight we’ll start working Mobile Ship Channel and start dragging our way back. By the time we get up to Middle Bay Light we start jacking everything up. Around here most days we get a real hard rising tide coming up in that ship channel. Some days it’s hard to drag against the tide. So when we get back this way we’ll run back to the lower part of the Bay and fish our way back. By the time we’ve done that a few times we’ve done enough and then we meet the wife for retail and start unloading our shrimp and taking care of customers.
Where do you sell your shrimp?
We mostly just catch them and retail them here at our dock. It’s gotten to the point that Bayou La Batre doesn’t pay enough for our shrimp to even worry about catching them and trying to haul them to Bayou La Batre. This is a family-run business. My wife handles all the retail stuff here at our dock on Deer River. We have a few restaurants we sell to. A few restaurants from Atlanta drive all the way down to pick up shrimp from us to get the quality they want. We have a few others we do business with but we sell most of what we catch right here at our own dock.
Do you think the Seafood Labeling Act will help the shrimping community?
Anything for the industry is good. The Seafood Labeling Act is just a start. The biggest move they need to make is to hamper the sale of the imports. If people knew what they were eating when they were buying it in the stores they’d move toward buying fresh, wild-caught Gulf shrimp, and not the pond-raised and such as that.
Most people need to hunt down their local commercial fishermen and try to buy their shrimp from one of them. If they went direct to the boat and bought their shrimp there they would never eat another shrimp out of a restaurant. They have no idea what they’re buying when they eat out of a restaurant. So the Seafood Labeling Act is a step in the right direction and I believe it will make a difference in the long run.
When did imports become a problem?
It probably started ramping up in the ’90s when they started really putting the pressure on us with the imports. You get more and more countries doing the pond and farm-raised and sending their shrimp here.
In the last five years it’s really gotten bad. It’s gotten to where there are so many imports now the local freezers are stocked full and there’s nowhere to go with the shrimp. Last year you could hardly sell a shrimp here and this year it’s going to be the same problem. There’s so many imports on the market they don’t want to pay nothing for the domestic shrimp.
What’s the most popular shrimp y’all sell?
Debra: The most popular is the 10/15s during the summer. Everyone wants the larger shrimp to grill and boil.
What’s the best way to cook them?
Debra: The larger shrimp, the best way is grilling them. Some people fry them and boil them but to me they get a little tough. But if you butterfly them and wrap them in bacon and put them on the grill for a little while, that’s fine.
I do this work because I want the people to know what they’re eating. It aggravates me so bad to know that people are out there buying these imported shrimp and they really don’t know what they’re eating. If they had a slight clue of how these shrimp were raised or where they came from they’d never buy another shrimp unless it was a domestic shrimp. We have top quality, they’re fresh, and you can taste the difference in it. And that’s why I try to keep the retail up, because the imports are killing us.
What do y’all charge?
The 10/15s, they normally go for $5 or $5.50.
What was the price for shrimp when you used to sell to the plants in Bayou La Batre?
David: Back in the ’80s when I got in the business I could take my shrimp to the dock and get $3.50 or $4 a pound for my big shrimp. And now here it is 2024 and I’m selling the same shrimp to the public for $4. So the prices for shrimp haven’t gone anywhere. I was in the grocery store the other day and I see a one-pound roll for Zeigler’s Garlic Bologna for $5.99 a pound. I can’t get $5.99 a pound for anything I catch.
Watch a video interview of David Bryan by scanning QR code.
LOVE at FIRST BITE
A ROMANTIC JOURNEY WITH BLUE CRABS IN MOBILE BAY
by SUSAN ROUILLIER
There is nothing quite like the taste of our fresh, steamed blue crabs on a warm evening by Mobile Bay. The Gulf breeze, the sound of the water, and the rich, buttery flavor of the crabs create an unforgettable experience.
How to Catch Blue Crabs on Mobile Bay’s Shores
In the summer, under a full moon with calm waters, you could see the lights moving slowly along the sandy shores of Mobile Bay. The lights belonged to softshell crabbers. They had only a few tools: a butane torch with a burning mantle, a small washtub, and a large-holed net on a pole. The scene was romantic and beautiful, only occasionally interrupted by a mosquito or a no-see-em bite.
The method was simple: walk slowly in knee-deep water through the grass beds, and shine the light through the shallow water, especially around pier-pilings or small depressions on the Bay floor. Hardshelled crabs scurried away unless the light hit them directly in the face, and then you had to be quick with the net. These crabs were scooped up and placed in the tub with some seaweed to keep them from literally tearing each other apart. Softshell crabs, vulnerable after shedding their shells, could be picked up with your hands and placed in a separate pouch to prevent them from being eaten by the others.
My father told the story of gathering crabs from Cedar Crescent to Terrell Road one night, placing them in a croaker sack and dragging it behind him. When he returned home, the crabs had pierced through the cloth sack, escaped, and only a couple of crabs were left from the long night’s work.
Soft-shell crabs, eaten legs and all, were best dusted in flour and sautéed in butter. It was delicious food, free for the taking. But the lights haven’t been seen along the shores for 15 years. The grass beds are gone, the water is no longer clear, and the shore’s bottom is thick and muddy from dredging and wave actions of massive ships carrying cargo into the port.
People still catch crabs today using crab cages, circular wire stringed baskets, or “chicken on a string,” also known as “depression crabbing,” which meant tying chicken bones to a string, throwing it out, waiting for a crab to bite, then slowly pulling it in to net it.
Enjoying the Harvest
Blue crabmeat, crabs, and soft-shell crabs are available in Mobile’s local seafood shops. Alabama crab fishermen land between 1 and 2.5 million pounds of crab out of the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi Sound each year. An estimated 5 million pounds of live blue crabs are processed annually in Alabama, with trucks arriving each night from neighboring states like Louisiana, Florida, and Mississippi.
Two of the most popular recipes for blue crabs in Mobile are crab cakes and West Indies Salad, the latter of which was first created in 1947 by the restaurateur William “Bill” Bayley, Sr., the owner of Bayley’s Steak House on Dauphin Island Parkway. (On the last page of this issue, you can find a crab cake recipe shared by Hollie A. LeJeune, the previous owner of Market by the Bay restaurant in Daphne.)
“From the Phylum Arthropoda, I’m So Blue”
I am close to spiders in the taxonomic tree, but I never came to land, I stayed close to sea. It's lovely to go in and out of water by the shore, and sidle sideways in my house, a sandy shelter with no spouse. So, my oddest pedigree doesn’t work so well for me. Because my legs have pointy pincers, I’ve been unable to convince her. She doesn’t like my carapace, it obscures my earnest face, So, I live alone in sandy hole, where she can’t see my heart and purest soul that’s hidden by my hardened shell. So, blue, inside my crab man-cave, I dwell. I’ll ponder a new strategy so that she will start to like me: get an eight-legged manicure, I don’t want to injure her.
I’ll flash stalk eyes by my antenna ‘Cause I really want to win her. I hope that she will like my space to have a sixteen-leg embrace.
- Susan Rouillier
Flounder gigging and crabbing with a butane light on Mobile Bay around 1970. Photo courtesy Michelle Garner-Janna
For this article, we spoke with Randi Cannon, a PhD candidate in Marine Ecology at Dauphin Island Sea Lab, about our blue crabs:
What has research shown about the health of the population of blue crabs in Mobile Bay?
I can say as a personal anecdote, that when in the field or handling oysters off the Dauphin Island Sea Lab dock, blue crabs are abundant. We often see juveniles on the oyster reefs we sample or hanging around the oyster cages at local farms. Sometimes they even make their way inside the cage and are presented with a wonderful buffet of oysters.
What is the life cycle of a blue crab?
Blue crabs begin their lives as tiny larvae, called zoea, often hatched offshore in higher salinity waters. As they molt and grow larger, into what we call megalopae, they begin to move closer to shore where food is more abundant. When they’re young they molt quite often, which is how they grow; they shed their hard outer shell (“exoskeleton”) and emerge as a soft-bodied version of themselves, and by absorbing water they grow and eventually harden yet again. They molt into the traditional shape of a blue crab (at about 2mm) and make their home in estuaries as juveniles. When it’s time to mate, the female crabs will move farther inshore to mate with the male blue crabs before they once again move offshore with their eggs. The eggs, once fertilized, will take one to two weeks to hatch, and the cycle starts all over again.
What is the distribution and density of the crabs in our waters, both in the rivers and in Mobile Bay? Are they more concentrated in certain areas?
This can fluctuate due to the season, gender, and age of the crabs. For the most part, we see juveniles and adult males in the lower salinity waters of the rivers and Bay. Meanwhile, adult females will often be in the higher salinity waters of the lower Bay, or offshore completely. We see a concentration of crabs in estuarine zones with substrate that they can hide or hunt around, like an oyster reef. The appearance of blue crabs is highest in the
spring and summer, and depending on how severe the winter months are, they will often bury themselves to avoid colder temperatures and we see them less often.
Is it healthier to collect blue crabs from Gulf waters, river waters, or Bay waters?
There’s not much difference, and I think this is mostly location-based. For example, you wouldn’t want to eat seafood in an area that is prone to sewage outflow. I think your safest and easiest bet for catching edible crabs would be in the Bay, as the juveniles will be what is mostly caught in the extremely freshwater riverine systems. Gulf blue crabs are also fine.
Are they safe to eat today?
Yes, they are! The main thing to avoid is eating a crab that’s been sitting dead in the crab trap. If it’s dead, throw it out or you can use it to re-bait the trap. Additionally, when eating local seafood, be aware of the water quality conditions, so you avoid ingesting something dangerous or toxic.
What are the restrictions on size or numbers for crabbing?
In Alabama there are restrictions for the number of crab traps an individual can use (5 per person) and you must have a Saltwater Fishing License with the state of Alabama. Crabs must measure 5 inches point to point. There are also regulations about where traps can go, mainly to ensure that they do not block boat traffic. From January to May, egg-bearing females must be thrown back immediately.
Any super interesting facts about blue crabs?
When in holding tanks in the lab, they appear to make vocalizations or clicking noises to perhaps tell us they are not happy with us. Also, they pee from their eye stalks! Their excretory glands can be found up by their antenna and behind their eyes and they will often squirt out their urine during a fight.
the Land Between the Rivers
THE NATURE CONSERVANCY’S JASON THRONEBERRY DISCUSSES A HISTORIC CONSERVATION PURCHASE IN THE MOBILE-TENSAW DELTA
by NICK WILLIAMS
photos by CAINE O'REAR
A river shack off Hal’s Lake on the Tombigbee River
Anybody who is familiar with the Mobile-Tensaw Delta knows that it is not a special place. It is many special places, all distinct but complementary to each other, and united by an underlying theme like the courses served at a fine-dining restaurant.
Borders don’t really exist in nature, but for practical purposes many consider the causeway to be the dividing line between the Bay and the Delta proper. To its south is open water peppered with cruise ships, barges, and shrimp boats. To the north lies mostly marsh habitat. The “dry” ground, such as it is, holds cane-cutter rabbits and a few whistling ducks that perch in scraggly trees. The phragmites hide rails, bitterns, nutria, and, of course, alligators.
A distant treeline hints at a different Delta. Motorists crossing the delta via I-65 can ride almost through the canopy of the Delta’s mixed forests. It’s hard to tell at 70mph, but you’re getting a good sample of tupelo and cypress, with a little oak, maple, hickory, willow, and the occasional sycamore thrown in. The boats you see here are after catfish and crappie instead of speckled trout and redfish, and beneath the canopy feral hogs rustle through the palmettos that make up much of the underbrush.
Millions of motorists see these sides of the Delta every year. But another facet of the gem exists, one that is visible by car, but just barely. During the dry summers, sightseers coming from Mobile can take exit 34 off of I-65 and hang a left. Travel Highway 225 north to the sleepy town of Stockton and take another left onto Highway 59. Drive past the Stockton Presbyterian Church (Baldwin County’s first established Presbyterian Church, chartered in 1847), and over Watson, Halls, Ferris, and Red Hills Creek. Pull over for a sip of cold water from the artesian well at Red Hills Spring, then continue until you see the big, green state-sign pointing the way to the Upper Delta Wildlife Management Area. If the rivers are low and the roads are dry, you’ll soon come to a big gate that leads to what a smaller green sign simply calls “The Swamp.”
Immediately past the gate, the road dips and is lined with cypress knees. But within a few hundred yards the road rises almost imperceptibly, and you will find your-
self in a vast and beautiful hardwood forest. Oaks and hickories dominate the landscape, with the familiar tupelos and cypress trees constrained to a few swampy regions.
The understudy is relatively bare, even in the summer, which makes it easier to spot wildlife. Deer become more plentiful here, and if you’re lucky you may catch a glimpse of a turkey dashing across the gravel road that laces through the upper regions. As you cross Globe and Bear Creek, you’ll flush wood ducks, ibises, and limpkins. The latter are newcomers to the Delta, who have expanded their range northwards as temperatures climb.
In the summer, it’s possible to drive for miles through this charming woodland. I’ve taken a Honda Accord almost to the Mobile River when the Swamp Road was dry and in good condition. But in the winter, the floods completely submerge that road, and the only way to travel it is by canoe. Paddlers confident (or maybe foolhardy) enough to brave miles of flooded timber will see deer, hogs, and other wildlife marooned upon narrow strips of high ground along the roadside, and the swamps ring with the squeals of thousands of wintering wood ducks. It’s an incredible experience.
This hardwood habitat makes up a small percentage of the publicly-accessible Delta. There are a little over 90,000 acres of land encompassed by the Mobile-Tensaw Delta and Upper Delta WMAs. Out of that, maybe 10,000 acres is prime hardwood habitat. Not nearly enough in the eyes of myself and many other outdoorsmen, who love nothing more than a cold day beneath the flooded oaks.
Earlier this spring, I was thrilled when The Nature Conservancy announced that they had purchased 8,000 acres of land lying between the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers; prime bottomland habitat. So thrilled that I made a few phone calls so that I could go see it.
Caine O'Rear and I left the McIntosh boat ramp to see the “Land Between the Rivers” under the care of Jason Throneberry, Director of Freshwater Programs for The Nature Conservancy in Alabama. With an M.S. in Biology and more than twelve years of experience in watershed restoration (recently he’s been working
with The US Army Corps of Engineers on a project to add fish bypass channels to dams on the Alabama River system), Jason is an important player in the fight to protect and restore one of the most ecologically significant riversheds in the world. To be honest, I was a little nervous to meet a man who, according to his bio, possesses “Rosgen fluvial geomorphology, river stability, and river assessment and monitoring training – Level 1 - 4.”
But my apprehension was soon laid to rest. When we pulled up, Jason was unstrapping a camouflage, center-console jon boat from its trailer. If it wasn’t for the absence of spider-rig rod holders and the presence of a TNC logo on the boat, you could be forgiven for assuming that the man with long hair, a sandy beard, and a working man’s tan was going crappie fishing. An Arkansas native, Jason’s deep appreciation for nature started with days in the deer stand and duck blind, and he can talk about deer rut and duck migrations as easily as he can discuss riparian forest restoration and endemic aquatic species ecology.
“I get some friendly grief from some of the guys at the deer camp,” he admits as we cruise down the Tombigbee. “‘Hey Jason, you still savin’ the world out there?’ they’ll ask. What do you say, you know?” he chuckles. “I guess, yeah … still trying to!”
As we ride, Jason occasionally points out local wildlife or interesting riverbank features. Soaring ospreys and jumping spoonbill cats compete for my attention as he tries to educate me on channel dredging and the effects it has on riverbank erosion. Eventually, we detour off of the Tombigbee and into Hal’s Lake, which runs through the center of the property. Hal’s lake has a colorful bit of local history tied to it. Supposedly, its namesake was an escaped slave,
who established “Hal’s Kingdom,” a refuge for other escapees, on its banks. The community subsisted on game and fish, supplemented by the occasional raid on nearby plantations. Legend has it that the kingdom fell when Hal was betrayed by one of his subjects, who led a vigilante group to his hideout.
Jason idles down the big jon, and conversation picks up. As Prothonotary Warblers and Blue Gray Gnatcatchers flit through the willows and oaks, the topics shift from coal ash, to family fish camps, to The Grateful Dead.
We pass several fishing boats anchored up alongside blowdowns.
“What do y’all think they’re fishing for?” Caine asks.
“Hmm … probably bluegill,” Jason replies. “Look there!”
We turn to watch an older fellow in a wide-brimmed sun hat lift up sharply on a long pole, deftly swinging a small, wriggling fish into his hand and then into an ice chest.
“This is a really popular place,” Jason tells us as we exchange a nod and a wave with the angler. “Always folks fishing back up in here.”
“Does it hold any ducks when these willows flood?” I ask.
“Oh gosh, yes! Lots of wood ducks in the winter,” he answers.
We come to a bend in the lake, where Jason eases the boat into the shade and kills the engine. Riding down the river with the wind in our hair, the summer heat was tolerable. But in the backwaters, the air is oppressively still and humid. As we dig cold drinks out of a cooler and watch gar drift below the muddy waters’ surface, Jason explains how The Nature Conservancy acquired this property.
It’s a bit of an odd tale. The property, owned by Mobile River Sawmill Division LLC, went up for sale. Rumor has it that among
Jason Throneberry of The Nature Conservancy
the prospective buyers was a European company that wanted to convert the hardwoods we were admiring into pellet stove fuel. Pellet stoves are often billed as an eco-friendly heating source, but I’m skeptical as I stare out at the Delta forest. (As an aside, after learning about the potential impacts of a graphite mining project on the Coosa River, I’m somewhat less enthusiastic about lithium batteries as an alternative to gas engines.)
A foreign entity purchasing this tract would not have been odd, since Alabama ranks among the top states in the nation for out-ofstate and out-of-country land ownership. Instead, luckily, the land was sold to The Nature Conservancy, who bought the property with (this is the odd part) funds partially provided by the Holdfast Collective.
The Holdfast Collective, for those unfamiliar, was created in 2022 when Yvon Chouinard (best known for founding the outdoor lifestyle clothing company Patagonia, but more interestingly known as a rock climber, falconer, and fly fisherman) transferred ownership of Patagonia to ensure that all profits would go towards combating climate change and protecting undeveloped lands worldwide. This move was part of Chouinard’s broader vision to use Patagonia as a force for environmental good, reflecting his lifelong commitment to conservation and sustainable business practices.
Patagonia was one of several financiers involved in the purchase, contributing $5.2 million towards the acquisition of a piece of what is increasingly being recognized as, in Jason’s words, “The most important place in the universe when it comes to freshwater conservation.” While it may seem odd for a West-Coast clothing company to take an interest in an Alabama swamp, no matter how diverse it is, it’s worth noting that Yvon’s wife’s (Malinda Pennoyer) family originates from the Gulf Coast area.
After a half-hour of note-jotting and picture taking, Jason fires up the outboard and begins the journey back to the ramp. As we rode, I digested what I’d learned, and ruminated on the future of the tract.
As an amateur conservationist, I’m thrilled that such a large tract of special habitat was preserved. As a hunter, well, I won’t lie. I’d be thrilled if I could chase deer and ducks on the property at some point in the future. I’ve hunted a good bit of land that TNC transferred over to the Forever Wild Land Trust. I’ve spent a lot of spring mornings listening to turkeys on the Splinter Hill Tract, which in addition to offering good deer and turkey hunting also offers wildlife photographers, cyclists, and hikers chances to view rare and beautiful pitcher plants in the spring. I’ve also dragged a few feral hogs off of the nearby Red Hills Tract, which hides the endemic Red Hills Salamander in its surprisingly steep topography.
Ultimately, though, what I really hope is that what I’ve seen today continues to happen. I want to see more Arkansas duck hunters turned fisheries biologists. More private landowners who would rather sell to conservation-minded organizations instead of profit-focused ones. More business owners focused on preserving instead of exploiting resources. In an increasingly tribal world, where “environmentalists” and “conservationists” don’t necessarily see each other as allies, it’s nice to imagine that one day, a boat full of Deep South duck hunters in Mossy Oak Bottomlands might get to enjoy a day in the woods courtesy of profit margins derived from the sales of what they would consider to be “yuppie” clothes.
PERDIDO BLUES
LOOKING FOR LIFE IN THE LOST BAY
by CAINE O'REAR
A patch of black needlerush in Soldier Creek
Sitting on the edge of Soldier Creek, staring across the water of a fine April morning. The wildflowers are in bloom, little purple clusters that my dog won’t stop eating. The tide is low at this hour and the weather is cool. There are few signs of life in the water below the wharf. I have never caught many fish here, other than catfish, a perennial nuisance. Once in a while I’ll catch a redfish or sheepshead, or maybe some white trout off the artificial reefs in Perdido Bay — but for the most part, it’s about the act, not the catch, when you work with rod and reel in these parts.
If you talk to the old-timers around here, they will tell you the fishing is not what it used to be. If you ask why, most will point the finger at the paper mill in Cantonment. From the 1940s until 2012, the mill – which came under the ownership of International Paper in 2000 – discharged the bulk of its liquid waste directly into the waters of Eleven Mile Creek, a tributary of Perdido Bay, causing catastrophic levels of pollution.
“There was something they were dumping in the water that was keeping the sunlight from penetrating, and it was killing the grass beds,” says Captain Wes Rozier, a veteran in-shore fishing guide who grew up near the bay and started guiding in his teens. Rozier can remember the lush grass beds that covered the bay in the 1960s, back when crabs and oysters were plentiful.
“Until the grass grows back in Perdido Bay, the fishing is not going to be good here,” he says with some resignation. “And it used to be such a great fishery. The ducks were back there in the rivers. Oh man, it was really good.”
Today, International paper reroutes its waste through a pipeline that empties into 1,400 acres of sprawling wetlands. As part of a process that is designed to reduce pollution input, the waste percolates in the wetlands for several days before settling into Eleven Mile Creek. This newfangled system was set up back in 2012, in compliance with the 2010 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination program. “As it re-
lates to further development of the wetlands, we have a dedicated team focused on ongoing preservation efforts and driving future investments toward maintaining the wetlands,” Whitney Fike, the regional communications manager for IP, tells Mobile Baykeeper.
While many consider IP’s efforts effective, skeptics remain.
“We haven't really seen any difference in the bay since [2012],” says Jackie Lane, a marine scientist who’s run the environmental watchdog group Friends of Perdido Bay for nearly four decades. “The fishing didn’t really get any better. In fact, it’s continuously been getting worse. Lack of good algae is the problem. When you only have blue-green algae blooming off the bay, you’re not going to get a good food chain off of that.”
Lane casts some of the blame for the bay’s pollution on the EPA, for allowing chlorine dioxide to be used by the paper mills as a bleaching agent for its pulp products. “As we have seen on Perdido Bay, chlorine dioxide breaks down into chlorate which is a potent herbicide. This has upset the primary productivity in the bay,” Lane wrote this spring in her monthly newsletter.
It’s no secret the upper part of the bay has borne the brunt of the damage. You can sometimes see a brownwhite scum that looks like dish detergent frothing along the upper bay’s shores. Some of the foam is natural, while some is augmented by pollution, but just how much is caused by pollution is hard to say.
The water around the Lillian Bridge offers telling signs as well. The bridge can be a popular location for catching sheepshead, especially in the late summer and early fall. Some fishermen tie off on the pilings and fish under the bridge, while others anchor close by. I have moored there many times but I doubt I’ll do it again. When you pull your anchor up from the murky depths, you inevitably find that it’s covered with a dark and gooey slime — what Lane calls a “dioxin-laden sludge.” The gunk is hard to wash off and makes a cru-
el mess of the boat. It looks like the sign of a waterbody that is sick and diseased; a far cry from the sandy bottoms that once blanketed the bay floor. I have never caught many fish under that bridge, but it is where some anglers go when they’re looking to land sheepshead for a fishing tournament, or entertain a guest with a sure catch.
Fortunately, Soldier Creek, where I spend most of my time, seems to have escaped the pollution issues that plague other parts of the watershed. Testing from Mobile Baykeeper’s SWIM program indicates consistently low levels of fecal bacteria there. The creek is a relatively protected estuary that flows nine miles from its source before emptying into the bay’s middle portion. Its headwaters consist of scenic hardwood swampland canopied by cypress, sweet bay, and swamp tupelo. Beyond it stretch moist pinelands and thick forests of pine-oak. As it flows south the creek becomes a saltwater marsh that is dotted with cordgrass, black needlerush, and other grasses, a critical habitat for aquatic life.
I still catch my share of blue crabs in the middle part of the creek, along with juvenile shrimp when the season is right. Not to mention finger-mullet, pinfish, and a miscellany of other bait fish with my casting net. I am a certified natural with the net (my one true angling skill), and the joy of catching chum in that contraption helps offset the disappointment that attends a consistently slack fishing line.
In late summer I can sometimes catch the bigger mullet when they’re running. It is during these months when the dolphin sightings increase. You can find them moving into the fresher water at dusk as they chase schools of fish and perform little arabesques on top of the water before diving back down in search of their catch. I
have never landed enough mullet to justify a neighborhood fish-fry, but a man can dream. Our late neighbor, a farmer of German stock named Curtis Cassebaum, held one every summer. He’d fry up the fish after a big haul with his seine and serve them to friends and family with a grin the size of Buc-ee’s, along with armloads of sweet corn from his family farm.
There was another fisherman in the neighborhood who was always worth his salt, and he lived next-door. His name was Jensen. He could work a bait net like a ninja. He knew every nook and cranny of the creek, as well as every honeyhole on Perdido Bay. He was a big-bear of a man with snow-white hair and a cigarette perpetually dangling from his chatterbox lips. I can still smell the cigarette smoke — Pall-Malls, I think they were — which hung thick and heavy on the wet air and announced his presence on those early summer mornings.
Like every good fisherman, Jensen was protective of his spots. When I first got to know him I urged him to take me out in his boat, but those pleas always fell on deaf ears. I knew he fished the reefs in the bay in the late fall with his brother and it was always gangbusters, to hear him tell it — hundreds and hundreds of white trout that he’d clean and freeze and send off with his brother when it was time for him to pack up and leave.
Jensen had lived on Soldier Creek for twenty or so years, long before my family’s arrival, and fishing was central to his life. Though I’m sure he did his share of deep-sea fishing, he was for the most part an in-shore fisherman, and he was committed to working the waters close to home, or in his own backyard, for that matter. One of the trademarks of his lifestyle was his mode of transportation on
An aerial view of International Paper’s mill in Cantonment, Florida. Photo courtesy International Paper
the home turf: the golf-cart. Every trip he ever made from his house to the wharf involved that little buggy. I don’t recall ever seeing him actually walk the one hundred and fifty feet on his own two legs.
I never spoke with Jensen about the health of the bay, and what it was like in the old days. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t get a word in between all his wisecracks. But he was not someone who was easily deterred by obstacles. He was going to fish till the end of his days regardless.
The Bay
Perdido Bay is shaped like a tilted hourglass, with its upper portion bisected by the Alabama-Florida state line. Its freshwater sources include Perdido River (which is rated an outstanding Florida water body for its ecological health), Eleven Mile Creek, and Bayou Marcus from the north, with Wolf Bay inputting into its southwestern portion. Palmetto Creek and Soldier Creek flow into its middle section on the western side.
It is a relatively small bay, covering just fifty square miles. The lower portion runs from Innerarity Point southward to Perdido Pass, where it flows across islands and shoals into the Gulf of Mexico. The bay’s watershed comprises Perdido Key in Florida, as well as Ono Island, Gulf Shores, Wolf Bay, Cotton Bayou, and Old River on the Alabama side, along with parts of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW).
For decades the bay has been beset by pollution, despite its status as a tourist destination. A grand jury investigation in the late 1990s revealed it to be one of the most polluted waterbodies on the Gulf Coast. In the fifty-two year period from 1940 to 1992, Perdido Bay
lost seventy-four percent of its seagrass coverage, according to a 2002 report from the U.S. Geological Survey.
The Mill
Just north of Pensacola off U.S. 29 sits the town of Cantonment. The paper mill that defines the town to this day opened in 1941, when the region’s timber industry was in full tilt. The mill was built by a man named John Pace — for whom the town of Pace, Florida, is named — who ran a large-scale timber operation with his brother. Originally, the region’s forests were dominated by longleaf pine, but after timbering, the forests were replaced with faster-growing slash and loblolly pine to satisfy ever-increasing demand.
At the time of its opening, the Florida Pulp and Paper company owned and operated the plant, where it produced artillery boxes for the war effort. Today the mill is owned by International Paper, which purchased the operation from Champion International in 2000. The plant spans 900 acres with more than 500 employees. Headquartered in Memphis with more than 50,000 employees worldwide, International Paper is mostly owned by institutional investors like Vanguard, Blackrock, and State Street Global, with the top 11 investors owning 50 percent of the company. Its total economic impact is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $300 million, according to a 2019 report from the Pensacola New Journal.
For years, the general consensus has been that the mill is the main culprit of the bay’s pollution problems. Kenneth L. Heck, Jr., a local marine scientist, wrote the following in a 2005 report for the law firm Levin Papantino: “Since initial construction in the 1940s, and subsequent expansions of what is now the lnternation-
al Paper Company’s mill in Cantonment, there have been a series of well-documented declines in water quality and environmental conditions in upper Perdido Bay that have been attributed to the discharges of IP and its predecessors, and reported in both the scientific literature and the popular press.”
The Good News
Despite years of pollution and ecological neglect, there are positive signs for Perdido Bay. According to satellite mapping data reports from 2020, there has been an increase of roughly 200 acres of seagrass in the bay since 2015.
That increase is due to several factors, according to Whitney Scheffel, a senior scientist at the Pensacola and Perdido Bays Estuary Program, a non-profit that was established from EPA grant funding in 2018. One of these is the presence of several no-motor zones around the islands in the lower part of the bay, which Scheffel calls “an effective way of protecting those grasses.”
The PPBEP has also been working with the Nature Conservancy on using dredge material to help restore areas like Robinson Island and Bird Island — popular hang-out spots for boaters and weekend revelers in the summer — and increasing seagrass habitat there.
“Those islands have seen a lot of erosion,” Scheffel says, “so we will be restoring the islands and transplanting some of the seagrasses to a safer location where the major beds occur. We hope to increase overall protection for those habitats to help bring it back to what it once was.”
In July, Mobile Baykeeper assisted with the transplantation of seagrass from Robinson Island to Walker Island.
Scheffel says a lack of historical data for Perdido Bay means we know less about water quality (e.g, dissolved oxygen levels, turbidity) in the Bay than the seagrass population. That means it can be hard to get a clear, comprehensive picture when it comes to assessing critical issues. The organization has been working with partners across different agencies to do more comprehensive monitoring. Watchdog groups like Friends of Perdido Bay have been conducting community monitoring projects through the years in certain sections of the bay. Scheffel says while those programs are good, more comprehensive efforts are needed.
“Sometimes you can get a silo and not really be thinking about it holistically,” Scheffel says. “Just to make those assessments you need a certain amount of data, and some of that data is just not there.”
I was curious to ask Scheffel about the sludge that blankets the bottom parts of the upper Bay; the slimy crud that invariably makes you question the health of your catch. (Last year the state of Alabama issued two fish consumption advisories for redfish and speckled trout caught north of the Lillian Bridge in Perdido Bay, recommending no more than two meals per month.) She says it’s likely the result of accumulation over time, stemming mostly from the days of heavy industrial pollution before the passage of the Clean Water Act. “I think it’s hard to determine one cause realistically,” she says of the sludge. “I think it’s the result of many decades of abuse.”
Scheffel notes that you encounter sandier substrate and less sludge as you move into the healthier, lower portions of the bay, which is to be expected as you move away from pollution point-sources. Yet she is careful to note that the yardstick by which one measures the bay’s health is ever-shifting.
“We’re kind of where we are and the environment is changing rapidly,” she says. “We will never get it back to what it once was and that’s because the conditions aren’t what they once were either, due to many decades of not always making great decisions about keeping the environment at the forefront.”
The PPBEP has been working closely with International Paper in an effort to get a better picture of holistic pollution issues in the bay. At one point in their discussions, IP was not passing specific tests for water-quality monitoring, and they were trying to pinpoint exactly why they were not passing that test. Scheffel says IP was able to rectify the situation by implementing an additional filtration process to the treatment method and meet standards.
Since 2010, IP says they have improved the conditions of the receiving wetlands by planting more than 180,000 native tree species; establishing a land management program to restore a 1,200-acre mitigation area; and conducting monitoring and research to document the benefits of removal of effluent flow from Eleven Mile Creek. In 2023, IP announced it was shutting down on its pulp production lines, a move that cost 100 jobs.
“There’s definitely been an improvement,” Scheffel says of the paper mill’s efforts. “I think people misunderstand outward signs that are happening in Perdido and they always direct that to International Paper.”
The Fishery
These days, Captain Wes Rozier only fishes Perdido Bay a few times a year. And that’s when he has clients who insist on fishing that kind of water. He prefers to work spots like Santa Rosa Round, where the grass is still lush and the fish are plentiful. He says he has to fish the bay really hard for hours just to get a few trout or redfish, when he should be catching the limit with no problem.
At 62 years old, Rozier remembers seeing lush grass beds in the bay as late as the ’80s, when there was still a healthy population of crabs and oysters. He talks about catching tarpon in Eleven Mile Creek with fly-fishermen that he’d take on guide trips. And then, before you knew it, the grass beds were gone.
Rozier can still catch fish in the rivers in the winter months. The only time the fish really move in Perdido Bay, he says, is when they’re coming out of the riverwater in search of more salinity to spawn. The fish that once moved through the bay and made the trek to Perdido Pass and Big Lagoon for spawning are no longer there, either due to die-off or locating someplace else, he says. “Fishing is based on oxygenated water, and it’s based on water temperature. Specks and redfish … they migrate distances just because of salinity of water. They don’t migrate like the Spanish mackerel … if he stops, he dies.”
Since the early 2000s, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has conducted surveys to determine trends and the abundance of certain fish species in Perdido Bay. One of those is a gill-net survey that targets juvenile and subadult fish species. Another is a survey with recreational anglers that monitors catch rates on behalf of NOAA fisheries, though the data for that survey is limited due to the dearth of boat ramps in the area.
Kevin Anson, a marine biologist with ADCNR, says the fishery is somewhat stable for various species. He sounds a somewhat hopeful note when he says “there are reports of fishermen catching species that 20 years ago people were not catching.”
Despite his frustrations as a fisherman, Rozier is careful not to
place the blame squarely on International Paper. He notes in particular the problem of lawn fertilizers, an issue that has only gotten worse with development. “You just can’t do the things we do today,” he says.
Rozier thinks there was a time about 15 years ago when things appeared to be improving.
“There was a little bit of spark right before the oil spill, and the fishing was starting to get better. We were starting to catch a number of fish. Then the spill happened and it just went downhill from there. You could go in and crush the flounder right before that, but they are just not there anymore. They were spawning in the oil out there and that hurt it. But there was a point just before that where I thought, okay man, this thing is starting to turn. And I think IP was in the process of trying to clean it all up then. But Mother Nature corrects everything [in the end]. As long as there is one male and female to spawn, the waterways will come back. But Mother Nature doesn’t have a clock. So if something messes up, there is a certain time before it all corrects itself. But it’s a shame. I won’t live long enough to see it. Probably you won’t either.”
A Clearwater Revival
“I thought it was a tarpon at first,” he says, “because I’ve seen people catch those before. When it first hit, I thought it was a lot bigger than it was because it hit my lure so hard and then threw a big splash in the air. Halfway through fighting it, it jumped out of the water and that’s when I knew it was a snook, because I’d seen them on fishing shows. I had never heard of them being around here.”
The common snook is a tropical fish that has not historically been caught in Alabama waters. It is mostly found around the Keys and is usually not seen north of the Everglades, until now. Local marine scientists have attributed the influx of tropical fish in Alabama waters of late to rising water temperatures.
Scott Bannon with DCNR says there are recent signs of a continuous snook population in the Perdido Bay Area, so the question arises as to what protections need to be placed on the fish. Currently in Alabama there are no limits on bag size or slot length. Bannon says the state might set a bag limit on snook in the near future, which would likely follow Florida’s bag limit of one.
“Until the grass grows back in Perdido Bay, the fishing is not going to be good here.”
— CAPTAIN WES ROZIER
Soldier Creek teems with life on some days, especially in its upper blackwater section. A few weeks ago my dad glimpsed a sea turtle in the creek, not long after stumbling across a nest of alligator eggs. There is aquatic life to be found, for sure. So maybe it’s just me when it comes to the fishing. Maybe I’m just bad at it.
Gardner Love is another story. A 17-year-old junior at Elberta High who lives off Soldier Creek, Love caught the Alabama state record for snook this spring.
One May evening after school Love was fishing the marshes with a spinning rod, working a silver-chartreuse Devil Soft Bait. After snagging a few trout, he cast his line toward some marsh grass and got hung up in a tree. When he finally managed to finagle the line out of the branches, his lure hit the water and then boom.
“They prefer the clear water,” Bannon says of snook, which is known to be great for eating. “We had one that was caught in Dog River, and there have been some in Mississippi, though those are probably wayward fish. But we’re starting to see them more and more.”
When asked about the quality of fishing in Soldier Creek, Love says it has been slow the past three years, compared to the days when he fished it as a kid. But he says the past three months the fishing has been better than anytime in his life, and that’s he’s landed speckled trout, redfish, and flounder every time he’s gone out.
“I grew up here and I know where everything is in the creek,” he says. “I know it like the back of my hand. I know all the spots to fish and how to catch fish. And it’s definitely been good lately.”
Love’s words are good news for a fishery that is ever-changing and still under threat.
A “no-motor zone” seagrass bed near Robinson Island. Photo by Chloe Ray
The Tug is the Drug
HOW FLY-FISHING
IS LURING IN THE ANGLERS OF COASTAL ALABAMA
by SAM WILKES
photos by COURTNEY MASON HILLEY
Whenyou watch the aerial loop of a fly line unroll into a straight and silent presentation, it’s easy to appreciate the dedication required for the sport. Fly fishing is not for those seeking immediate gratification. It’s more of a holistic journey — from customizing your fly, to stretching your line, to tying your leaders, to practicing your different casts, to learning feeding patterns, to stalking a fish — all culminating in a presentation hopefully attractive enough to entice a bite. It is the antithesis of today’s on-demand culture. Yet, there appears to be a growing interest in our area. A place with a relatively young history with the sport, Mobile Bay does not come first to mind when talking about fly fishing. Far from the rippling mountain streams or the turquoise flats of the Bahamas, our area presents its own unique traits and challenges.
The Local Pioneers
No one knows these traits better than living legend Jimbo Meador. A good friend and inspiration to the late Winston Groom and Jimmy Buffett, as well as countless others, Jimbo was an early pioneer of fly fishing around Mobile Bay.
“As a kid I was mainly freshwater fly fishing, catching bass and bluegill bream. And I still love that. Ain’t nothing like seeing a bass inhale a popper,” he says. “Then in the early ‘80s, I was fortunate to become friends with author Tom McGuane (who married Buffett’s sister Laurie) and he invited me to the Keys for bone fishing and tarpon fishing. So, he really got me fired up. Then I came back up here and started guiding.”
Orvis endorsed Jimbo as a fly guide when hardly anyone around here was fly fishing. “I started out mainly catching redfish. But I discovered my money fish was what we call Bonita here in the Gulf, but they’re actually False Albacore or Little Tunny,” Jimbo says. “They’ll put you in the backing for you knew what happened.” Jimbo would fish the upper Delta for bass, bream, and even redfish, depending on the season. He’d also go south of the Battleship and grass flats below the Causeway, as well as down to Three
Rivers around Fort Morgan.
When speaking of fly fishing, one typically means sight fishing. “Being able to see the fish and see him eat the fly is the ultimate goal of my fly fishing,” Jimbo says. In our area, this mainly involves sight fishing for redfish. However, you can catch just about anything on a fly that you can catch on conventional tackle, from trout to jacks and even flounder. A Jack Crevalle brings an exhausting fight on conventional tackle, but on a fly rod it presents a whole new set of challenges.
“At one time we had 120 Gulf shrimp boats working out of here and I knew a lot of them, and they’d save bycatch for me,” says Jimbo. “And you could get around one of those shrimp boats and there would always be Jack Crevalle, which was another money fish. One time I had a guy on a trip that wanted to catch a Jack on a fly rod. So, I took him around one of those shrimp boats and the Jacks were just like piranhas hitting all that bycatch. And he hooked one and I said, ‘All right, that there’s a Churchill fish.’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ And I said, ‘I’m going to light up this here Churchill cigar and it’ll take me an hour or so to smoke it and by the time you get that Jack in I’ll be through with it.’”
Jimbo’s favorite fly depends on the conditions and the target. “For the everyday, all-around fly, the Clouser Minnow fly is hard to beat,” he says. For years, Jimbo taught casting schools for Orvis. “First, to give someone tips you need to know what kind of fishing the person is going to do,” says Jimbo. “Montana is very different than saltwater fishing. When you start saltwater fly fishing you really need to learn how to double haul cast and cover long distances. When you’re fishing for bass and bream, you’re not making very long casts. You still have to make accurate casts, but on open water you need to learn how to deal with the wind and double haul to get it out there.”
Robert “Bobo” Cunningham turned to Jimbo for guidance when he decided to take up fly fishing and chase International Game Fish Association records, which Bobo recounted in detail in his 2012 book
Peter Jordan (left) and Blake Walters work their fly magic in Weeks Bay
Chasing Records: An Angler’s Quest. Jimbo had no interest in records, but he was there for several of Bobo’s world-record fish, years before Bobo went on to lead the litigation against BP for the Deepwater Horizon spill.
As Bobo and Jimbo have proven, you can fly fish from just about any type of boat. However, the favored design for stalking game fish on the flats includes a shallow draft for skinny water, no T-top, and a poling platform for a stealthy height advantage. Jimbo had one of the first flats boats around here. “They all laughed and said what the hell kind of boat is that with the poling tower and all,” he says. Now you see Mavericks, Hewes, and Hell’s Bay flats boats, among others, throughout the area. And that was not the last time Jimbo would be mocked for being ahead of the trends. Jimbo also helped design Native brand kayaks specifically for fishing, requiring two features — the ability to stand up and a comfortable first-class seat. “All the companies laughed at us for putting a comfortable chair in a kayak,” he says. “But when fishing, a lot of times you’re just sitting there. So, we designed them for comfort and built those seats in-house. And all those companies made fun of us. Now go to any kayak store and every one of them is using them.”
Captain Dan Kolenich started fly fishing in Mobile Bay around 1990 when he bought his first boat, then turned guiding into a fulltime career around 1999 with his charter business. “After a year or two of guiding full-time, I met Jimbo Meador,” says Kolenich. “He was the Orvis regional manager, and he was instrumental in getting me involved. After a meeting with Mark Bressler of Orvis, I became an Orvis Endorsed Fly Fishing Guide in 2000.”
For his first ten years guiding, Kolenich would launch from the Causeway, while occasionally trailering to Orange Beach for some clients. For the last 15 years, he’s lived in Fairhope and launched at the Fairhope Yacht Club, picking up clients on Fly Creek or the Grand Hotel or the Causeway. Kolenich developed a gold fly for redfish that he says works well in the flats and offshore for the bull reds, but overall, the Clouser Minnow is the one he uses the most.
“My favorite time to fish is May as the saltwater fish move up the Eastern Shore and in November when the water has finally cooled down,” Kolenich says. “But also, during the summer, targeting reds or Jack Crevalle can be productive. If you want to pick a fight with someone, the fish to go for is a Jack Crevalle during the summer into the fall.”
Mobile Bay, however, poses several challenges for fly fishing. “Since a fly line is so big in diameter, you have to allow for the effect of the wind during your casting and with the effect of the current on your line in the water,” says Kolenich. “If possible, I like to drift with the current to neutralize its effect. Also, with Mobile Bay, the water clarity is affected by the sediment that flows into the Bay. In the winter the visibility is zero. Sometime in May the water starts to clear up and usually by late June you can find two feet of visibility. That only allows for six months of sight casting in the grass flats. The other thing to remember is that the Bay turns into freshwater during the winter when it’s muddy. The clear water is saltwater that moves in as summer approaches.”
Around 1999, Spencer Johnson and his wife, Mary Ann, moved to Fairhope and opened an antique store, The Church Mouse, with the Fairhope Fly Shop tucked within the same charming building on Church Street. Each year, Mary Ann would travel to Europe to buy antiques while Spencer used the trip to fly fish and build inventory for his shop. Although small, Spencer’s store was the only one in
the area devoted to fly fishing and had everything one needed to get started on their journey. He also taught fly-tying lessons as well as casting lessons with tips passed down from fly-fishing maestro Lefty Kreh himself.
I had the pleasure of taking casting lessons from Spencer a few years ago. He would take students out into the streets of downtown Fairhope in front of his shop and let them fumble through it. I remember my fly line whipping several sideview mirrors, baffling the passing tourists. I would pause to let them see there was no hook, but Spencer waved off my concern and said, “Don’t worry about them, keep casting.”
Unfortunately, Spencer passed away in early 2023, leaving behind his influence and a growing community of people who shared a passion for the sport he loved. Mary Ann continued with the shop for a brief time, catching up with loyal customers and clearing out the remaining inventory. “Spencer was one of the more instrumental members that got the Eastern Shore Fly Fishers Club off the ground in 2009,” says Patrick Bearden, president of the Eastern Shore Fly Fishers Club. “His impact will certainly be felt on the sport in the area for a long time, plus his flies always caught fish.”
A Growing Community
The Eastern Shore Fly Fishers Club currently has around 45 members, mainly in Mobile and Baldwin counties. Due to the membership reach, they rotate monthly meeting locations to try to accommodate all. The first Tuesday of the month is usually an educational meeting open to the public, with local guides and conservation experts teaching about specific fish and tactics. The third Thursday meetings are fly-tying nights where a professional leads the members through a new pattern.
“We have a pretty diverse mix of individuals, from younger anglers, anglers with young families, and retirees who are always willing to educate the next generation of anglers,” says Bearden. “Many of our anglers are men, but we have several women in the club who are often the better casters out of the group. There are no age restrictions or requirements to join, just a $50 membership fee to help us pay for fly-tying materials for our monthly tying gatherings, while students (elementary through college undergrad) are free to join.”
Along with the regular meetings, the ESFFC also has several tournaments and events throughout the year to encourage folks to get out and fish. One of those is the Angler of the Year tournament, where anglers have from February through December to target several of the sport fish in the area to earn points, and the angler with the most points at the end of the year wins. The group has also been active with the Tripletail Classic, which is a catch-tag-release tournament where anglers target tripletail exclusively on the fly during the summer. He encourages people to reach out and says the best way to stay up to date with the meetings and events is to follow the club on Instagram at esflyfishers.
The inaugural Tripletail Classic was held in May of 2020. After monthly fly-tying nights at Spencer’s Fairhope Fly Shop, a few ESFFC members met up for beer at the Flybar and came up with the idea of hosting a fly-fishing tournament to unite and grow the local fly-fishing community. They chose the tripletail species for a reason. “They are great for new or part-time fly anglers and catching them doesn't necessarily require an immense amount of local knowledge, making it accessible for anglers of all levels,” says Danielle David-
son, one of the tournament originators.
“The Gulf Coast Research Laboratory tripletail tagging program has over 30 years of research and data, and we wanted to introduce anglers to another way to find gratification in tripletail angling beyond ‘filling up the box.’ The Tripletail Classic directs all proceeds annually back into fisheries research and related educational activities.”
In 2022, the tournament added a marine debris category that encourages anglers to collect a bag of trash while fishing, which then enters those participants into a drawing for high-end prizes. The marine debris prize is a clever way of promoting a cleaner waterway and appears to be trending through local tournaments.
Emily Glasgow received a point for a bag of trash when she won the 2024 Mixed Bag Award at the Gulf Coast Classic Tournament in Gulf Shores this past May. At only 26 years old, Emily caught the greatest number of different species. “It really required you to think outside the box,” she says,“and challenged us as to how to catch the most variety of fish in the time frame given. We used everything from trout flies to catch finger-mullet to big streamers to catch Spanish Mackerel. We didn’t sleep much during those two days.”
To win, Emily caught 13 different species on a fly, including a grunt, pinfish, bass, redfish, catfish, Mangrove Snapper, and speckled trout, among others. She caught her variety of fish in spots ranging from the Three Rivers region to the Perdido Pass area. Emily also received the Unique Catch Award for a grass carp. “I noticed they were having a feeding frenzy on these little seeds blown on the top of the water. So, I broke out the trout box and threw every single nymph I could imagine. But I had this one little bitty size 16
and I threw it out there and it kind of mimicked the little seeds, then I caught that grass carp. Those things are very hard to catch,” says Emily.
But with Emily’s outlook, the challenge is welcomed. “There is not a type of fish I hate catching,” she says. “They say the ‘tug is the drug’ and that is the truth. There’s something about the eat of a fly and the fight of a fish on a fly rod that just keeps you coming back for more.”
The Next Generation
The open-minded perspective helps with such a seasonal fishery. Peter Jordan, owner of Lost Angler, a local online fly shop, says: “The pro of Mobile Bay is that there are a ton of different species. The con is that it can be tough to learn because it is seasonal. Just like a menu at my favorite restaurant. It may not always be a good day to order veal or oysters, but it’s always a delicious day to come to the restaurant. That mindset makes it a lot easier. So, you have to be flexible and change what you are fishing for depending on the time of the year, which can be tough for new fly anglers because it’s a lot easier to come in and learn one species.”
While in college in 2007, Peter started the University of South Alabama’s bass fishing team. He soon grew tired of the egos and wanted to take his own uncharted journey. He quickly realized that he could create a fly into any lure he wanted and that practicing his cast at night under the streetlights was the perfect salve from the pressures of the day. He started going to the casting seminars at McCoy Outdoors in Mobile but was too nervous to approach Jimbo Meador and ask for tips. So he read books and watched lessons on
Blake Walters’ VW “FSHNBUS”
YouTube.
“I remember reading Thomas McGuane’s 92 in the Shade and one character was trying to understand Permit [fish] and went out on a skiff and sat there for an entire tide change just watching,” he says. “So, I took my kayak down to Dog River to a flat by Perch Creek. No rods, I just anchored, took me a sandwich and some drinks, and waited and watched for four and a half hours. I watched those fish come onto the flat and learned how they fed and how they moved and what they did and the whole nine yards. Suddenly I started studying bull minnows and tying flies that look like bull minnows. Then I started studying what the shrimp look like and how they change colors throughout the year. And it gave me so much more of an appreciation for the Bay and places that I once thought were simply empty mud flats and realizing how teeming with life they really are. This changed my outlook and I started to appreciate different parts of Mobile Bay. For instance, the Causeway is vastly different from the middle of the Bay around Dog River and Weeks Bay. Bon Secour Bay is so different than the Mississippi Sound. Fort Morgan and Navy Cove are vastly different from Dauphin Island even though they are a few miles apart. Each one has its own character, just as one might say the people in those areas have their distinct characteristics. And that was probably the big change for me in my fishing, in that I realized that fly fishing was so much more than chunking a bait. With bass fishing, it’s about getting as many casts as possible in to really work that waterbody. Fly fishing is much more like bow hunting. It’s not ‘how many shots can I make,’ it’s ‘how close can I get to understanding that fish before I take that one shot.’ And once I realized that, it changed my entire world. And after that, I never
picked up another spinning rod again.”
Peter opened the Lost Angler in Daphne – it became an exclusively online operation in August – which had filled the void left after the closure of the Fairhope Fly Shop. The fly master who Peter was too intimidated years ago to approach would come to his shop often. Lost Angler even hosted a “Jimbo Meador and Friends’ Redfish on the Fly Tournament” last November. “When I opened my store, my goal was to grow the fly-fishing community more than anything else. How do we get more people involved, having fun and learning? And then, how do we get them to understand and get involved with what Baykeeper and SALT are doing. To get people to understand that when you see the world on such a smaller level and see our bay and see our rivers and everything it touches, you realize just how interconnected and fragile it is. And I want my kids to be able to enjoy it. So that’s been the overarching goal of Lost Angler. And who knows, if I’m lucky, I’ll screw up and sell some fly-fishing equipment too.”
Peter’s personal favorite fly for the Mobile Bay area is a Bead Chain Seaducer. “I have caught every species you want to catch in Mobile Bay on this fly,” he says. Peter loves catching redfish in the fall and the comradery of having a buddy poling on the platform while you’re casting, but he says, “If there’s one fish that just gets my goat and keeps me up at night — it’s striped bass.”
Lost Angler is working with the Alabama Department of Conservation and National Resources to help rebuild the Gulf stripers population. “This is our steelhead,” Peter says. “A species that would go into the Gulf every year and come into the rivers to spawn. And our area used to have a tremendous stripers population. ADC-
NR is doing a tremendous job of trying to rebuild that population, which is still extremely fragile. Those fish can be fussy, they can be picky, and they pull like an absolute freight train. It’s our anadromous fish species and really tells the story of Alabama’s entire ecosystem. They are an amazing species. It’s Alabama’s sport fish that you can catch in Mobile Bay, Cahaba, Coosa and Tallapoosa. Name another like that.”
With the growing fly fishing community, there is a new generation of guides poling around Mobile Bay, more than this article has space to highlight. Sam Glass had his first job at age 16 working at a fly shop in Virginia. He moved to Mobile for college around 2004 to pursue marine biology until he realized there wasn’t much fishing involved. Sam got his first skiff in 2010 and officially started FlyWay Charters in 2019, but had been giving charitable trips long before with a good client list built up.
“Jimbo Meador was doing it long before I was, but he was no longer doing it when I started out. So, for a while, I felt that I was just discovering this whole new thing, but then I met Jimbo at the Bluegill and started talking and I just laughed at all this stuff that I thought I had found, had already been found,” Sam says. “Jimbo came up when he saw my flats skiff pull up at the restaurant. He thought it was his old one. So, we started talking and hung out a bit. With just a flat skiff or a rod or even a fly on a hat, you never know how much of conversation that can sprout.”
FlyWay Charters is located in Spanish Fort with lodging available, but Sam will launch in different locations depending on the client’s desires. He fishes from the Florida line to around Biloxi. Sam will take a conventional trip, but 95 percent of his trips are fly fishing. “Redfish was the intriguing factor for me. In the mountains of Virginia we had native trout, smallmouth, largemouth, needle nose gar, but I was always hunting that bigger tug,” he says. “We’ve also caught 30-lb to 40-lb and sometimes over 60-lb black drum out here. And that’s a big fish to tug on a fly rod that doesn’t see very well and the fly has to be really well presented,” says Sam. “And I strictly do sight fishing. I love the one-on-one, or, if you see a school, it’s you versus the school of fish to make them want to eat. I think getting that close to that creature adds so much to the experience. You can do the same sight fishing on conventional light tackle, but fly fishing adds a lot of art technique to it. I always say when we’re fly fishing, we’re really stalking these fish, it’s more hunting than fishing.”
Blake Walters grew up in the Grand Bay area and started out fly fishing in a pond when he was a kid. Later, meeting Spencer and others with the ESFFC only accelerated his interest in saltwater fly fishing. At age 36, Blake left the corporate world and decided to put his fate in his own hands rather than someone else’s and started a fly charter business under the name “Fairhope Fly Guy.” Blake says, “The traditional fly angler is very methodical and purposeful in every aspect of the art, which I found attractive. It’s more than just picking up a rod and going. It’s a process.”
Blake’s favorite fly is the Squimp, a mix of shrimp and squid pattern. “Peter at Lost Angler makes fun of me because I talk about it all the time, but I do think it’s the greatest,” Blake laughs. “I’ve caught everything from pinfish all the way up to large redfish and jacks, just about everything really.”
Blake will fish any waters from Moss Point, Mississippi, to Perdido Key, Florida. “Most of my clients are out-of-town and want the saltwater species, mainly redfish, so I’m typically at the south end of the bay.” But Blake loves to explore the remote oxbow lakes of the
upper delta as much as he values the marshes and creeks around the Mississippi Sound and Fort Morgan.
“Ultimately, Mobile Bay is extremely attractive because of the diversity,” he says. “I’ve caught flounder, redfish, largemouth bass, speckled trout, and bream on the same point near the Causeway. Also, smallmouth buffalo is a species not a lot of people around here target, but it is a native species and they are a blast to catch. They are all over the Causeway in the fall.”
Blake grew up around the Bay and echoes our concerns for the future. “One major negative for Mobile Bay is the clarity. That’s what Baykeeper is known for — fighting for a cleaner estuary, which I’m all for. But that’s the real struggle, I’m trying to sell sight fishing to my clients and that’s the biggest appeal on my end, but if you cannot see the fish, then it’s not a viable option. And that’s the pro and con, we have a phenomenal level of diversity, but at times it’s tough to see them.”
Jimbo Meador, and others from his generation, remember the clear days and have seen firsthand the water clarity worsen over the years. “When I was kid, I could spear fish in Mobile Bay and shoot sheepshead and flounder. I live in Point Clear and we used to have eel grass halfway out our pier,” he says. “That’s the nursery grounds for everything. All our shrimp, crabs, and fish. But we’ve destroyed the habitat. We used to get softshell crabs right off the pier, but they don’t have anywhere to hide anymore. The grass holds the sediment down, but now, without it, if you get a little wave action you stir the
sediment up. Real simple — if you put a tarp over your yard, the grass isn’t going to grow. Well, the muddy water is just like a tarp.” Mobile Baykeeper lists the recovery of seagrasses as a core goal in its mission statement. It’s a multi-faceted, uphill battle, but there’s simply no reason to accept the current condition as some new normal. Unfortunately, when Jimbo speaks of the lush eel grass under the piers and spearfishing in the clear shallows of the bay, most of us need our imagination, as those images only exist in the memories of an older generation. I have visited the area throughout my life and moved here in late 2008 but have never known that version of Mobile Bay. As Jimbo says, “Each generation loses something, but they don’t know what they lost because they never saw it.” Fortunately, we have folks like Jimbo around to tell us what we’ve lost, and to remind us of what we’re fighting for.
Sam Wilkes, Peter Jordan, and Caine O’Rear cruising Weeks Bay
AM/NS Calvert is focused on servant leadership. A partner promoting environmental stewardship while continuously investing in our communities.
Africatown’s Swim Program Aims to Redress Historical Wrongs
by SHALELA DOWDY
TheBlack community in the U.S. has a complex relationship with water. During the period of slavery, many of those who were enslaved sought freedom and chose to escape to the North. One of the obstacles encountered was bodies of water that sometimes separated a free state from a slave state. To prevent enslaved people from successfully escaping, many were denied the opportunity to learn how to swim. Getting into the water was a way to change one’s scent and throw off the dogs used to hunt down those brave enough to escape.
Decades later, Black communities faced racial discrimination concerning pool access during the Jim Crow-era between the late 1800s and well into the 1900s. The discriminatory pool practices and violence during this period denied Blacks access to community pools. This contributed to a cultural climate discouraging Black people to swim, which in turn led to a fear of swimming.
According to the USA Swimming Foundation, about 70 percent of Black children are non-swimmers, which is due to lack of access, financial constraints, fear, and cultural factors. As the oldest of ten children from a single-parent household, I grew up without the opportunity to partake in swimming lessons, or become familiar with water. My mother does not know how to swim and neither does her mother which played a role in my chances of acquiring the skill set. As an undergraduate at the United States Military Academy at West Point, I had no choice but to learn how to swim because it was a required class. Even though I successfully passed the required swim course at West Point, I still do not have a great relationship with water, nor do I feel comfortable in that space. If I had been introduced to swimming at an early age, my sentiments toward the water would be much different.
swimming pool in Kidd Park (Africatown’s only swimming pool). The program, whose day-to-day operations are run by Tyrese Bess, offers children in the community free swim lessons three times a week in the summer. Instruction has been provided by Coaches Derrick Tinsley and Davis Craig, both experienced local swim instructors.
For her, Aaryan says the most rewarding part of the program is “witnessing the kids who refused to get into the water in the first lesson jumping into the deeper end of the pool by the end of the summer.” She says it was great to observe the confidence of the swimmers grow and see them believing in themselves and their abilities to be successful swimmers.
The swimming lessons are also a family affair, due to the presence of the parents at the pool. “The parents are an essential part of changing intergenerational attitudes of fear, avoidance, and disempowerment that many folks in Black communities have about being in, on, and near the water,” she says.
The program graduated its second class of students this summer, and Aaryan believes swim programs will be integral to changing the statistic that threefifths of drowning deaths in the U.S. each year are Black Americans. The program establishes the infrastructure needed to create and sustain a profound cultural shift.
Programs like the Africatown Swim Program are important in shaping the narrative of the Black community’s relationship to water. I attended a few swim sessions this summer, and it was great to witness Black children of all ages learning how to swim. Hopefully, this program can be the blueprint for more programs to follow and play a role in decreasing the number of drownings in the Black community, all while re-establishing a communal love for the water.
In 2023, the Africatown Heritage Foundation, under the direction of Anderson Flenn, established the Africatown Swim Program. The program was created by Aaryan Morrison and has been held at the
Shalela Dowdy is a community organizer at Mobile Baykeeper.
The Crisis in Prichard
A CALL FOR URGENT ACTION
by CADE KISTLER
Every time a rainstorm hits Prichard, Alabama, the streets are awash with sewage spills. This isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a public health crisis that has been festering for decades, largely ignored by those with the power to make a change. The residents of Prichard deserve better. It’s time ADEM, the EPA, and our elected officials step up in a big way.
The situation in Prichard is dire. The water and sewer infrastructure is crumbling. Recent assessments have revealed that 70 percent of the water pipes require replacement within the next 20 years, demanding an investment of approximately $240 million. Further, the wastewater side of the utility will require replacement of about 32 percent of sewer pipes over the same period, requiring a $100 million investment. Overall, the utility will need more than $400 million invested over the next two decades to deal with its problems.
This systemic neglect mirrors broader patterns of environmental racism seen in other cities like Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi. In those cases, the requisite outrage in local, regional, and national media spurred the appropriate response from state and federal agencies. But for Prichard, a predominantly Black community, the response has been tepid at best. To date, even though everyone wants to celebrate the finding of the Clotilda and nearby Africatown’s history, they seem content to sweep the water woes of Prichard (tens of millions of gallons of sewage overflows), under the rug.
Many of those living in Baldwin and Mobile counties are familiar with the big picture details of the Flint, Michigan and Jackson, Mississippi water catastrophes, but don’t know about the crisis going on in their own backyard on the Gulf Coast.
Not to excuse issues of other wastewater utilities, but for scale, in 2023, all the sewage spills reported by every utility in Baldwin County combined (1.53 million gallons) were only about one quarter of the amount of sewage spilled by Prichard, roughly 4.5 million gallons. In 2022, the difference was even more striking with all the Baldwin County utilities reporting 2.69 million gallons spilled, compared to more than 18.7 million gallons of sewage spilled into local waterways by Prichard.
Prichard’s water and sewer system is receiving a $5.8 million financial infusion from ADEM. This funding is a good start, intend-
ed to “help jump-start the process” toward addressing the serious problems plaguing the system. The initial funding will pay for the rehabilitation of water tanks, design work for future water and sewer repairs, upgrades, and financial audits. While these measures are important, in the face of a nearly $500 million problem, they are merely a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. The reality is that Prichard’s utility is hemorrhaging millions of dollars annually, and its customers, already overburdened by their bills, cannot bear the brunt of these costs alone.
John Young, the court-appointed receiver of the Prichard water system, acknowledges the gravity of the situation, having worked in struggling utilities around the country, including in Flint, Michigan. He says Prichard is in the worst shape of any utility he’s ever dealt with.
This is not just about infrastructure and being able to swim safely in our waters; it’s about justice, health, and the dignity of our neighbors. We cannot continue to ignore the plight of Prichard’s residents. They deserve clean water, just like every other American. The residents of Prichard have waited long enough. With a new master plan in place that details what’s needed to fix the severe problems the utility faces, the time for action is now.
Prichard’s water crisis is a glaring example of environmental injustice that demands our attention and resolve. Every American, regardless of their ZIP code, race, or income, deserves access to clean and safe water. With billions of dollars of infrastructure funding being made available we need to call on ADEM, the EPA, and our elected officials to step up and make the necessary investments to secure clean water for Prichard.
Learn more about Baykeeper’s work on the Prichard water crisis by scanning this QR code. You can also watch a documentary on the subject — Wastewater: A Tale of Two Cities — at southernexposurefilms.org.
Hollie LeJeune's World-Famous Crab Cakes
INGREDIENTS
1 large egg
2 1/2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons Old Bay seasoning
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons finely diced celery
2 tablespoons finely diced green onion
2 tablespoons finely diced red bell pepper
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley
1 pound lump crab meat
1/4 cup panko
Vegetable or canola oil for frying
DIRECTIONS
Sauté celery, onion and red bell pepper in butter and cook until translucent, 2 to 3 minutes. Combine the egg, mayonnaise, Worcestershire, Old Bay, salt, parsley, cooked celery, onions, and bell pepper in a large bowl and mix well. Add the crab meat (check the meat for any hard or sharp shells) and panko; Gently fold the mixture together until just combined, being careful not to shred the crab meat.
Shape into 6 cakes (each about ½ cup) and place on the prepared baking sheet. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour to help them set. Fry them in a little hot oil, 3-5 minutes per side. Serve them warm with tartar sauce. (The cakes may be formed and refrigerated a day ahead before cooking if needed.)
This recipe was created and shared by Hollie A. LeJeune, the previous owner of Market by the Bay Restaurant in Daphne.
