Bella Bella fishes the Gulf Coast

Ah, much good can come from a bit of quiet fishing.

Fresh air and exercise. Peace and tranquillity. A better appreciation of nature, and of why we need to look after it well. Good jobs for fishing guides and tackle manufacturers. Beautiful homes and public gardens.

Wait a minute? Run that last one by us again, teddy bear. Fishing leads to beautiful homes and public gardens?

It sure does. If you’re a busy executive named Bellingrath, and your doctor tells you to relax and go fishing!

The Bellingrath Gardens are a  26-hectare property that was developed by Mobile, Alabama’s first Coca-Cola bottler, Walter Bellingrath, and his wife Bessie. They bought the land as a rustic fishing camp on the Fowl River in 1917, when Mr. B’s doctor told him that he was working too hard and needed to “learn how to play.”

Mrs. B began the gardens in 1927, and opened them to the public in 1932. The couple’s 975.5-square-metre, 15-room mansion was built by 1935. The gardens have brought joy to visitors since before my grandma was a cub. And there, you see, is some of the good that can result from a love of fishing!

My own humans, Suzanne and Dave, do a decent enough job of our yard, but I don’t expect any magnificent public gardens from them. They do, however, share Mr. Bellingrath’s fondness for fishing.

And my goodness, there is good fishing around Orange Beach and Gulf Shores.

The Necessity is a 19-metre-long yacht run by Captain Ben Fairey of Necessity Sportfishing Adventures. He and his deckhands took a big group of us on a six-hour charter trip to fish "artificial reefs" (that is, wrecks). This area is known as the “Red Snapper Capital of the World.” 

We saw a pod of bottle-nosed dolphins as we pulled out of the marina, while big, brown pelicans dive-bombed into the sea for their breakfast. We passed under the vaulting Alabama Point Bridge that connects Perdido Key, in Florida, to Pleasure Island in Alabama. 

The land is very flat as far as the eye can see, the shoreline crowded with marinas, pastel-coloured houses, and hotels.

Once offshore, our group played several big, active fish called amberjacks, a red snapper, and even a feisty black-tip shark! We kept a few amberjacks to cook for supper.

Another kind of fishing is in smaller “flat boats” that hold just two or three passengers and a guide. We boarded a centre-console called Alabama Girl, skippered by a guide named John Sullens. 

Mr. Sullens showed us “inshore” fishing in the sheltered waters near the Alabama Point Bridge. Breakwaters about a kilometre from the bridge shelter the inland waters that hold all the local marinas. This neck of water is called either “Orange Beach Pass” or “Perdido Pass.” 

Casting live shrimp with spinning reels, we soon caught four shiny pompano fish, and a Spanish mackerel. John and Dave helped me with the casting, though I summoned the nerve to bait the hook myself! The bucket of live shrimp made for a very feathery, wiggly plunge of my paw …

At 9:00 a.m., we motored back to fish right under the big, arching bridge. We caught toothy bluefish, big striped sheepshead,

a green triggerfish with a single long “horn” sprouting from its forehead,

and a big, handsome redfish. 

Red fish, blue fish … isn’t that a Dr. Seuss book? These tropical fish certainly look like Dr. Seuss could have drawn them.

You can fish along the beach, too. Jack and Debbie Wilhite run the Summer Hunter, a  12-metre cruiser. 

The sea (with two-metre swells offshore) was too rough to troll off the beach, so we trolled with lures called “spoons” at the mouth of the harbour.

  We soon played a sheepshead, a flounder, a lively stingray, a Spanish mackerel, and a small catfish. Just as we were bringing in the lines to go, we got a double-header of bluefish! A “double-header” means that two fish hit your lines at the same time.

A third kind of local fishing doesn’t involve having a boat.

The Gulf State Park Pier opened in July of 2009. It replaced a pier built in 1968 that was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan in 2004. The new pier is 470 metres long. The pier is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is well-lit at night, with low-sodium lighting that doesn’t confuse the loggerhead turtles who nest on the beach. 

Signs along the pier help visitors identify their catch, respect fishing regulations, and understand the ecosystem. 

The pier’s wooden railing was lined with regulars nicknamed “Pier rats!” People often bring their own home-made, wheeled carts to transport their fishing gear, nets, coolers, and other supplies. 

People near the pier’s beach-end told me that they were catching flounders and redfish, while those toward the tip of the pier were catching Spanish and King mackerel. 

It was fun to think of Mr. Bellingrath, and how much he would have enjoyed fishing (and playing) with us around Orange Beach and Gulf Shores!

Story © S. Clouthier

Photos © S. Clouthier and D. Wei