We set out from Fly Creek Marina in Fairhope aboard Dr. So many memories come to mind when I think about Lee, including the time we tried to go fishing in the Chandeleur Islands off the Louisiana coast. Just as the flounder got near gigging range, a huge wake from a ship heading down Mobile Ship Channel crashed ashore, and the jubilee vanished right before our eyes. One night we were all set for a big jubilee with everything falling into place. When a thundershower moved through in the afternoon and the wind was blowing gently out of the east, Lee would tell me to expect a phone call.īut you never knew what you were going to get or whether it was going to materialize. At times it was everything, with blue crabs crawling out on piers and pilings to flounder stacked on top of each other trying to find oxygen. and I heard “Rivenbark, Fairhope Pier,” I knew to jump up, grab my wading shoes, gig and light and meet him for the bonanza that is a jubilee. It usually happens in the wee hours of the morning, and a jubilee could include everything from flounder to shrimp to crabs to eels. With the right conditions, that oxygen-depleted water moves to shore, mainly Baldwin County’s Eastern Shore, pushing those fish and marine creatures ahead of it. Jubilees occur during the summer when patches of water with low dissolved oxygen form in the bay. Lee, known as Uncle Lee to my daughters, had knowledge of Mobile Bay was extraordinary, and I was lucky enough to be on his jubilee hotline.įor those who aren’t familiar with the phenomenon, a jubilee happens when the bottom-dwelling fish and creatures in the bay end up on the shoreline. We caught a dozen before the spot ran dry. If our baits landed in an area about the size of a washtub, we ended up with a fish. I got Lee to cast in that spot and he hooked a fish. I caught a flatfish and cast right back into the same spot and hooked up again.
I was dragging a plastic grub across the bottom, hoping to locate a few flounder. If mullet tried to swim past the Rivenbark pier when Lee was there with his cast net, the fish didn’t stand a chance.ĭespite his reluctance, one day he agreed to go with me on a little fishing trip to the Grand Hotel jetties. He tried to teach me but finally gave up when I got to the butterbean stage. He much preferred a cast net and could throw a “silver dollar” every time. Lee was the first to admit that he was not a hook-and-line angler. I don’t remember how many times Lee retold that story to illustrate how “sorry” I was, but it always ended in a big laugh. If the water was calm, I’d roll over and go to sleep. If I could see fish activity under the light, I would grab a rod and reel and head down to catch a few fish for the next night’s meal. From my vantage point in the apartment, I could take a pair of binoculars and look at the pier. Obviously, the pier light attracted bait fish and subsequently speckled trout and redfish. It was a small apartment, but it had a great view of the Rivenbark pier and water beneath the pier light. In fact, we hit it off so well that before I got my family moved down, I rented a garage apartment on the Rivenbark compound on Mobile Bay at the south end of Fairhope, where the Rivenbark family had been since 1966.
Lee was a man of the outdoors, from the intricate machinations of Mobile Bay to the haunts of the wary white-tailed deer. When I first moved to lower Alabama to take the job as Outdoors Editor at the Mobile Press-Register in 1992, a friend of mine insisted I look up Lee when I got to town.īoy, I’m glad I did. However, he always tried to help with what I wanted. The first sentence out of his mouth was, “Whadda you want?” When his wife, Charlotte, handed him the phone and told him it was me, no “How are you doing” or any such formalities ensued. He could be short and to the point, and our last phone call started in typical fashion. Rivenbark fits in what I call my curmudgeon category. He was 76.īecause of the virus restrictions, I was only able to visit over the telephone before he passed away. He lost his battle with prostate cancer recently after a long struggle. Robert Lee Rivenbark of Fairhope did not succumb to the coronavirus. While I and my family have been blessed during the COVID-19 pandemic with basically no ill effects, the virus robbed me of the chance to say farewell to one of the people most influential in my career covering the outdoors in Alabama. I was lucky to be on Robert Rivenbark’s jubilee hotlineĪL Dept. Virus robbed me of bidding farewell to great friend
0 kommentar(er)
