We all have heard about time travel in the movies and it sounds like nothing but pure fiction. But, in reality we are all time travelers, moving forward through time.

We can’t go back but we can remember things as they were as long as someone is alive to tell us.

When we talk with people about what fishing was like 30 or more years ago. we get a different picture from the way things are now. Sooner than we would like to think, that history will become legend and the legend become myth, for none will be alive who remember it.

While we still have people around from those days gone by it would behoove us to listen to what they have to say, so we might better measure what we have gained against what we have lost. We should do this quickly while the Gulf is still visible between the condos, restaurants and expensive homes.

There weren’t a lot of recreational anglers fishing years ago like we have today. It was mostly commercial and some charter fishing in Alabama’s near shore and inshore waters.

Mr. Buddy Wallace of Gulf Shores, who retired after 32 years of teaching in the Alabama school system, was a part time local commercial fisherman.

He started commercial fishing with his father in Little Lagoon in the 1930s when he was 6 years old. He and his father fished for mullet using a beach seine and later bag a seine with two boats and a couple of barges. A single hand-powered boat was used to drag one end of the beach seine out into the lagoon with the other end fixed to the shore.

They would “surround” a school of mullet and bring the end back to shore to meet the other. Lengths of the net would then be pulled to shore by hand and the mullet removed. A few years later he started using “two boats to surround a school with a seine” and then they pulled it close to one of the barges in shallow water.

Typical of the innovative nature of fishermen they would sometimes use “part of a car body rigged with floats keep it half submerged” to hold the fish. The seined mullet would then be placed in the “car” using it like a live well.

After the 1960s “seines were completely replaced by gillnets.” He said it wasn’t unusual to “take nine to ten thousand pounds of mullet or croakers per set with a seine.”

He occasionally worked part time in the deepwater shrimp fishery when it started up after WWII using otter trawls. In later years he had his own inshore shrimp boat and trawled in the Lagoon.

There are many odd looking fish in the Gulf and even a small inshore area like Little Lagoon has its share of weird creatures. The stargazer was the most unusual fish Buddy said he ever encountered.

Stargazers have a large head with a thick body, some very sharp dorsal spines and rarely reach a foot in length. Besides spines this species has a surprise in store for anyone who picks it up. In the clear spot between their eyes they have electric organs, which won’t give you a “nasty shock” like the torpedo ray but you will remember it the next time you reach for one.

Local shrimpers like Mr. Wallace once took significant amounts of shrimp and fish out of Little Lagoon, which provided a supplement to his teacher’s salary. With all the development that has taken place, concomitant pollution and channeling of Lagoon pass, few shrimp or fish are now taken from the Lagoon.

Science and technology have replaced the art of fishing and business what once was a family tradition. Perhaps one day the grandchildren of those now fishing will listen to the history that has become myth and think — finding

something is losing something else. They may think about, perhaps even mourn, what was lost to find this.

Think Global – Act Local!

Dr. “Skip” Lazauski’s television show “Eco-Bites”, can now be seen on youtube.com. To reach Dr. Lazauski for questions and comments, send emails to IchiOrca@yahoo.com. For more information, see his Web site, www.drskiponline.com.