Alabama Part 1- Cops, Gators, Bama Bass and Baseball Cards

We arrived in Alabama late at night and decided to get in a little fishing at Lake Jackson in Florala, right on the Florida/Alabama border. We had pulled into a lakeside park and had been there for only five minutes when a police car pulled in behind us. They asked what we were doing, and told us firmly that the park was closed. We told them our whole story, and soon enough they warmed up and told us all about their favorite bass lures and fishing tactics. They asked for our Facebook account, followed us, and then pulled away, saying us we were good to fish as long as we didn’t cause any problems. We got a couple minutes of fishing in before several large alligators started closing in on us on the dock and we called it a night. We drove to the closest Walmart which was about twenty five minutes away and was in northern Florida.

Shortly after we pulled in, a man came up to our car and asked if we could help jumpstart his car. Of course we said yes, having just dealt with battery problems ourselves and understanding the annoyance of a dead battery all too well. We drove over to his car and tried to jump it multiple times. But our old van hooked up to his old Hyundai was not going to work. He then sheepishly mentioned he was also out of gas, so we grabbed a gas tank out of his car, walked over to the nearest gas station, and got a him couple dollars worth of gas and finally got it started. He had introduced himself as Steven, and he gave us a crate of old baseball cards out of his trunk, telling us he had helped a young man jumpstart his car the previous week and received the cards in exchange. It felt only fair to pass them along to us. So we went to sleep with another story, and a box of baseball cards.

The next morning we drove up to the Conecuh national forest, and fished at a couple different ponds and creeks before catching two Largemouth Bass in one of the creeks. Or so we thought. We were excited to be done and moved on to Florida. But after posting them on social media we had a follower reach out and let us know that they were actually Alabama bass, a very similar looking species of black bass. We realized then that would have to come back to Alabama later and fix this mistake.