Fishing Issues

Shallow Does it for Scott Wiley

Where Scott Wiley grew up near Bay Minette, Ala., the only shell beds he ever dragged a worm across belonged to oysters, and a Snagless Sally in-line spinnerbait was his fallback choice when all else failed. Even today, depending on the delta tide, the bass hold in water less than 6 feet deep, and a grinnel or redfish is just as likely to grab a lure as a largemouth. The current moves the Tensaw River at a languid pace toward Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, curling and eddying past flooded cypress and tupelo gum, under vast mats of lily pads and through forests of eel grass, and past the sleepy fish camps scattered along its banks: Upper Bryant Landing, Cliff’s Landing, Hubbard’s, Hurricane Landing and Cloverleaf among them.

The Mobile-Tensaw River Delta is no place for a tournament fisherman to cut his teeth, and it didn’t exactly offer Wiley a lot of variety in the way it fished when, as a boy, he was first introduced to it by his grandfather.

There are advantages to being a bank-runner like Wiley. He doesn’t have to worry about other anglers beating him to his best offshore spots, nor about the fish developing lockjaw because there’s no current. The downside is that, typically, there aren’t as many fish roaming the shoreline in August. That’s a gamble Wiley is willing to make, however.

“There are always shallow fish. You have to find them and figure out what to catch them on, but they’re always there,” thinks Wiley, who has a heating and air-conditioning business in Bay Minette.