Photos by Meggan Haller
A four minute drive from my house in Midtown takes me straight to the mouth of the Bankhead tunnel, where I hold my breath out of 35 years of habit until I’m spit out at the crossroads of US 98 E and US 90. Today, and most days, I veer left. If you’re local, the Causeway needs no introduction. If you’re not local, area residents hope you never discover the Causeway and its seven-mile escape from the congestion of cars that clots the more well-known Bayway. Aside from being a safe haven from traffic, it’s also where many locals access the waterways that lie between Mobile and the Eastern Shore.
Dr. Sean Powers, director of the School of Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of South Alabama, as well as a senior marine scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, credits our local geography as one of the obvious, yet perhaps less widely acknowledged, benefits of life in our area.
“One of the things that separates Alabama from many other states is how accessible the water is,” Dr. Powers explains. “Think of Louisiana. Immensely productive system of marshes and wetlands, but the vast majority is not accessible to the public. Mobile Bay, from Dauphin Island all the way to Gulf Shores, has one of the most accessible fisheries in the US. Think how little of the beach in Florida is public. They don’t have all the rivers and the Delta like we do. We have a moderate coast line, but you can actually stop and fish here. It’s a remarkable place.”
My very short road trip complete, I pull over at the first sighting of a fisherman. No fancy boat, no wharf, just his own two feet squared off on the pavement, the bed of his truck folded out like a table holding his bait and supplies, and a bucket hat with two mini fans attached, which he offers to me immediately. My older brother’s insistence on escorting me as I approach strangers on the Causeway today suddenly feels silly.
We quickly learn that Kikie Beckham has been coming here since he was a kid, but he’s only enjoyed it for the last few years. “I used to hate it,” Kikie admits. “My mom loved it, but I always thought of it as punishment. When I retired, I just started coming out here one day for the quiet and the peace of mind. I like this spot because it’s close to home. I’ve missed a few Sundays lately, but this morning my wife told me to go because she knew I needed to get away.”
While he prefers to fish alone, Kikie won’t be solo today. “My grandson is headed here for his very first time,” he says with a smile. A few minutes later a car pulls up, a very bouncy three-year-old gets out to greet his grandfather, and we get the pleasure of watching this hobby make its way to the next generation. As if on cue, Kikie’s rod begins to arch as the line tightens, and he quickly reels in a catfish for the new fisherman, who beelines it straight back to his mom, his grandfather laughing as the memory etches itself in real time.
Further down the road, I pull over when I see a family out on the pavement setting up homemade crab traps made from wire, string, rocks, and raw chicken meat. Seated in a fold-out chair, the matriarch explains to us that she caught crabs this exact same way with her mother, and now she is here doing the same thing with her three children. She claims the nets only need about ten minutes or so before they will be full of crabs. The hard part comes later, when it’s time to pick the crabs after they are boiled.
This group effort reflects another point Dr. Powers brought up when we spoke about the cultural impact of fishing on
the Causeway.
“Most of the fish they are collecting, they’re not only fishing for themselves; they’re fishing for their neighbors and their churches,” Dr. Powers explains. “It’s a communal fishing effort. Shoreline fishers have a community impact. If you really want to see the close and long-term association of Fairhope and Mobile with the water, you would look at those cultural fishermen on the shoreline. We are blessed with a vibrant and healthy fishery right here. It’s truly unique. You can see a really diverse community of people fishing on the shoreline—it might be a doctor on the way home from work, it might be a church member fishing for a fish fry. It’s rare that you see this widespread use of the shoreline. It’s uniquely Alabama and it’s uniquely Mobile Bay.”
We walk a ways down the road and meet Frank, of Spanish Fort, who quickly educates us on what seasonal fishing means on the Causeway.
“The best time to come out here isn’t until October and November, when it gets cooler and you start to see more land than water,” Frank explains. “All the rivers flow south to this spot, pushing freshwater down to the bay, but during the fall, there is less rain, so the salt water from the Gulf will get pulled north, right here, and with it, a wider variety of fish.”
Frank points to his buddy, who we will call Jimmy because his windblown blonde hair resembles Mobile’s native son of a sailor and he didn’t offer his name. “This guy right here has caught several sharks right off the Causeway, one 38 inches long.”
If that sounds like just another fish story, Dr. Charlie Martin, an assistant professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of South Alabama, as well as a senior marine scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, has spent enough time researching these waters to have the scientific evidence to back up both Frank’s theory, as well as Jimmy’s catch. Well, at least the possibility of Jimmy’s catch.
“It is typical that more marine and estuarine species move into the upper portion of the bay during the fall months,” Dr Martin states. “In general, there is less rainfall in the watershed and that allows a ‘salt wedge’ to move up and into the rivers in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. As salinity increases, more of the marine species move north into the bay—redfish, flounder, spotted seatrout, blue crabs, shrimp, even jack crevalle, bluefish, and some other species that prefer higher salinity water. It is a really interesting system in that way, and a portion of our research is understanding the interactions between these transient marine and estuarine species and freshwater species, like largemouth bass, spotted gar, and other sunfish that occur during this time of year. We often find in our samples a diverse mix of freshwater and marine species all in the same place!”
According to Frank, the more hardcore fishermen can be seen in waders 200 feet out standing in the water when the temperature starts to drop. “The Causeway is an interesting area to fish, and you’ll meet some interesting characters, too,” Frank says, as he throws a thumb out in Jimmy’s direction. Jimmy himself is knee deep, not in water but in another one of those fishing tales he’s spinning to my brother about a 38 pound black drum he caught right here on the Causeway. “Everybody has their own spot,” Frank continues, “depending on what they like to catch. Some will choose a spot based on the depth of the water and the type of fish that will yield, and some are just out here to catch anything they can.”
Jimmy is a bit harder on me with the interview. My opener, “Why do you like to fish in this particular spot?” is met with “Well, I can’t fish on the highway.” And my followup, “But why here, on the Causeway?” is swatted aside with “Because right over that wall, there is water with fish in it. You’re kind of silly for a writer.”
Above Graph Dr. Charlie Martin, Assistant Professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of South Alabama, as well as Senior Marine Scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, says this graph shows the “salt wedge” that develops in the Bay during the Fall that is responsible for the increased number of saltwater species caught off the Causeway at that time of year.
I dust off my ego, and we say goodbye to Frank and Jimmy and ride a little further down the Causeway toward the Eastern Shore, hoping to find one last fisherman before heading home. I spot a man and a woman who appear to be together, but also not, fishing about 100 feet apart from each other on the same side of the road. I pull over and slowly walk toward the woman first, but the look on her face tells me this is going to be a short one. I introduce myself and give my writer spiel. She tells me she and her husband live in Fairhope, and they both work full time, her husband in retail where he talks to people all day, so they really need this, the quiet and the peace of mind Kikie mentioned earlier. I take the hint and leave them to it. As I climb in the car, I stop for a second to watch their fishing lines dance through the air, like delicate spiderwebs being flung out across the glassy stare of the water’s surface.
As I drive home past more fishermen dotting both sides of the road, I’m reminded of a sign I saw once while living in New Orleans. Hand-painted in bright colors by Simon, a French artist in the Lower Garden District, its funky script read, “Even Jesus had a fish story.” Thanks to one early morning spent with the fishermen of the Causeway, now my brother and I have a few, too.
As the temperatures finally start to drop, I hope this fall season is full of fish stories for those with a special spot on the Causeway. And if the fish aren’t biting, I hope everyone at least reels in a little peace of mind.
