USA Other Thread, My Redneck Vacation: Mobile, AL 6/3-22 in Fishing Reports; Day 1-3
Headed home to my roots to leech off my cousin, Mark, for three weeks. First couple of days ...
Headed home to my roots to leech off my cousin, Mark, for three weeks. First couple of days fished in Mark's 16' skiff in a canal that empties into the Mobile, Bay. Caught a half dozen speckled trout and flounder each day. We threw out chicken wings on weighed cord (4) tied to the boat in 10' of water while waiting for the fish to bite. Caught almost a 5 gal bucket of large males each time. Nothing better than picking crab while drinking a cold beer and bsing. Fish to 3 lbs.
Today went snapper fishing with my other cousin, Neil, and fished on his buddy's 26' Palm Beach. Went out for about an hour out of Dolphin Island past a bunch of oil rigs. He had a bunch of holes out there not by any oil rig. After trying about 5-6 holes finally found one holding red snapper. And I mean big hard pulling fish. I rassled pulling 3 large ones in. I figure the biggest was 20 lbs. Had a boat limit of eight, limit was 2/person. Golfing tomorrow.
Golf on the 4th day. Nothing special except got a hole-in-one after putting the 1st ball out of bounds for a 3 on a 170 yard hole at Heron Lakes CC. Day 5 was more of the same flounder fishing plus crabbing. Got a mess of crabs this day over 30. Only got one flounder but lost a 25" at the boat. Picture of Mark in his station. Also by mistake made a mini-movie of us getting bait at the local bait shop. Didn't know my cheap-ass camera could do that. Mark fixed blackened red snapper for lunch. Dinner was crab cakes, beer can chicken, collard greens, butter beans, tater and corn bread. Real southern comfort food.
Got another 24 crabs, 3# flounder and other stuff. Home by 0930. Golf the safternoon at Gulf Pines in a 3-man scramble.
Dinner was fried flounder, hush puppies with corn & crab, coleslaw and crab cakes.
Crab Cake Recipe
*mess of crab meat
*mayo
*mustard
*worchester sauce
*sweet onion minced
*garlic minced
*celery minced
*tarragon
*lemon juice
*1/2-1 stick of salted sweet butter
*whip egg with little milk
*Progesso plain bread crumbs
In a sauce pan melt butter on LOW heat with onion, garlic, celery and tarragon. Only sweat the onion in melted butter. Remove from heat. In a large mixing bowl put the crab meat, mayo, mustard, lemon juice, and worchester sauce. Mix together. Next put egg mixture and melted butter in crab meat bowl along with about 1/4 cup bread crumbs. Mix together. Keep adding bread crumbs until mixture wholes itself together and does not seem wet & sticky. Let set 5 minutes. Grab a handful, shape into a patty (see pic) and place on waxed paper. Fry on low heat with a little olive oil and butter (1/8"). Turn every 2 minutes. Turn up heat a bit if cooking too slow. Remove when crispy golden brown on both sides (about 8 minutes).
Day 7 headed out to Mark's hunting cabin in the hills of Clark Co Alabama. First stopped at Albert's barber shop to check to see if the bushel of corn had come in. Mark plans on putting a few bushels up ( blanch then freeze). Here they pick the corn and put it up while it's only a day old or less. We got up to the cabin about an hour later. "Doll" called Mark on the way up and said to meet at his private pond he made to catch some brem for dinner. Doll owns about 4,000 acres of timber land plus the land Mark's cabin is on. He's the one that looks like General Washington and is the leader of all the boys in the area. He got the nick name "Doll Baby" at birth cuz he looked like a baby doll. Mark says he one mean mother fucker along with his brother "Big James". Took us about 2 hours to fill up a cooler of brem. Big James was there too. Saw a giant bass feeding on the brem about 100 yds away. They get to 15 lbs they say in the pond. I didn't have any gear to catch them but wait til next time (sunday). Went back to cabin cleaned the fish then drove around the property. It had gravel and sand operations as well as timber. Full of little ponds with gaters and turtles and cypress swamp forest as well as pine timber. Mark pointed out a lot of deer and hog tracks. He always has his rifle handy to shoot hogs cuz they tear up his corn fields. About 2pm "Sammy" calls and wants to catch some brem for himself so off we go again. Sammy just finished stocking one of his ponds with 500 bass. About 530 Mark and I headed back to the cabin to fix dinner for about 15 of the good-o-boys. They use Marks' place to hang. Big James prepared the fish to fry while Sammy did the fresh squash and taters of of his garden. Fried every thing up in the fryer below except for the cole slaw I made. Get together went well into the nite. Big James' recipe for batter was; soak the filets in butter milk for about 30 minutes. In a large bowl put some flour, corn meal, salt and pepper. Place filets in the bowl one at a time and coat. Leave filets in bowl while adding others until a batch is done up. Fry to golden and crispy. Very simple but gooooooooooood.
Next day got up and went back to catch us a few brem for home. Then headed back. Just fussed around Mobile getting some provisions for Sunday. I'm gonna do a Texas BBQ for the boys up in Clark County, boar ribs (from there), back ribs, sausage and larger blue gulf shrimp. For dinner that nite we had some prime beef filets that Albert brought over. After cutting the filets in half (1"), I pan fried the filets in a iron skillet on a turkey cooker propane blaster outside. I let the pan almost get red hot then put a strip of bacon for each filet and cook to almost crispy. Put them aside. Then fry each steak for about 2 minutes each side til rare. They will finish to med-rare while resting. Then I made a gravy out of the pan drippings by first putting a 1/2-3/4 stick of butter in the pan and let it bubble a bit on med heat. Then added about 1/4-1/2 cup flour and stirred for about 6 minutes until the rou was a little darker than peanut butter. Then added about a can of double-strenght beef stock to get the thickness I wanted while salt and peppering it to taste. At the last minute added the rest of the butter to give it a nice shiny and smooth tecture. We served the dark rich gravy over the filets and taters. Mark made some sauted taters & onions from the leftovers from Sammy. Goods eats that nite.
First off i got to tell ya that was some fine lookin snapper. Next what a great bunch of pictures, looks like everyone was haveing a blast. Thanks for sharing that, way cool.
Had a golf match with my cousin at a Robert Trent Jones Golf Course, "The Falls" at Magnolia Grove. Hardest couse I ever played. I sucked big time. Took a drive out to Dalphin Island afterwards so my cuz could look at home that needed painting.
Spending today getting ready for going back to the hills and cook a Texas BBQ for the Boys up there. Got 3 racks of Costco-type back ribs, two large boar ribs (shot there), 5 lbs of large gulf shrimp, 3 lbs Conecuh sausage (best smoked sausage in the world), bushel of King corn picked last nite, and baked beans with deer hamburger meat.
Going to the Mobile Bear Bears baseball game tonite. They use to be affiliated with the Padres a few years back. This is Peavy country.
Also fried a batch of fish and squash with the local's batter.
HH
What a life. It's the simple things we forget to stop and do more often. I could eat like that every day. Only thing missing in the pics are the shrimp.
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