The world’s largest fishing tournament

The Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo is one of those Southern institutions that “don’t so much transcend divisions of class and culture as bypass them altogether,” said Bill Heavey in Garden & Gun. Every July, 3,000 anglers gather at 14-mile-long Dauphin Island to compete for prizes. Among the contestants are millionaires piloting yachts far offshore and locals in lounge chairs fishing from the beach within arm’s reach of their coolers. In 2017, I joined friends on a chartered fishing boat, and even though I caught nothing and once fell overboard, I had a great time with Capt. Charlie Gray, who afterward treated me to shrimp and grits at a local bar. “It was an absurdly pleasant scene.” The tournament ended with the firing of a Civil War cannon, and as entrants lined up to weigh their catches, young boys and girls didn’t shy from handling the barracudas and moray eels. “This is, in fact, a big part of what the rodeo is all about.”