In this installment of our series celebrating rugged work, our correspondent travels outside of the geographic West to learn the very Western value of “sitting on ready.”
It was a bad morning to go fishing, if there is such a thing. The cold sliced my skin, the choppy water bounced my stomach, and the wind whipped through all four layers I had on. I leaned against the railing of a boat in Alabama’s Blakely River, not far from the Gulf of Mexico, and tried not to care if I caught anything.
Only a fool thinks the point of fishing is to catch fish. But I didn’t want to freeze and get skunked. We had been at it for half an hour or so, and of the three people on the boat, I was the only one who hadn’t caught anything. Yes, my guide, Frank Harwell, owner of Coastal Blue Persuasion Fishing, had hooked a speckled trout and given the rod and reel to me to pull it in. But, no, I don’t count that as mine.
To my right, seagulls dived again and again, hunting for shrimp. Harwell reported that those birds were like giant neon arrows pointing to fish that were down there feasting on the same shrimp. He told me to cast just behind the birds and let the current take the live shrimp at the end of my line under them.
I threw one exactly where he said to.
I got a nibble but nothing more.
“Do it just like that again,” Harwell said, “and you’ll catch one.”
So far that morning, he had showed himself to be a birder, a biologist, a historian, and, obviously, a fisherman. Now he was playing prophet, too.
I did it just like that again — and I caught one, a speckled trout.
Grinning with delight, I pivoted my hips to bring the fish to him. As I did, I caught a wide glimpse of the river, clear and shaded brown, surrounded by tall grass. That panoramic view made me contemplate what just happened. As Harwell tagged the trout and threw it back, I thought about all the time and effort that went into that one simple catch of a fish — the predawn ride to the boat, skipping across the river as frigid spray hit me, following Frank’s instruction to cast right there, and so much more than that.
Freezing his bass off: Author Matt Crossman on his uncommonly cold Gulf Coast fishing trip showing off his catch.
It has taken Frank a lifetime of work, and a willingness to fight through terrible conditions, to put that smile on my face.
He has been fishing in Gulf Shores his whole life, taking people fishing here for 30 years, and guiding full time for 10. He has gained a wealth of knowledge in those decades on the water and refines it daily.
To those three decades of experience, he brings a diligence in fulfilling Coastal Blue Persuasion’s No. 1 goal: to have fun. A less-durable guide would have canceled the trip entirely because of the poor conditions. But Harwell travels widely, and every time he goes somewhere, he charters a fishing trip.
That gives him insight into his customers’ mindset: “The weather may not be the best, but they’re on vacation, and they want to fish,” he told me afterward. “As terrible as that weather was, I would have been pleased if we’d caught just one.”
We caught 10 — speckled trout, white trout, a buffoonishly large catfish, and an equally small one.
Harwell offered perhaps the best description of work in the west I have ever heard or ever will: “I like to be sitting on ready.”
Sitting on ready!
That applies to fishing, to guiding, to life.
If you’re sitting on ready, you’ll close that deal, fix that fence, land that trout.
And sitting on ready goes far beyond simply casting under the seagulls as they divebomb for shrimp.
Some tools of the trade — a little rapid trolling motor repair from the local shop to get the captain, crew, and clients back on the water.
No matter the conditions, Harwell has to be prepared to handle them. He keeps dozens of fishing poles ready for every type of fishing he leads through Coastal Blue Persuasion — offshore, nearshore, inshore, whatever. That way, if the conditions change suddenly, and he has to change plans on the fly, he can do so.
Eighty percent of his customers are repeats, and he has heard frequently from customers frustrated about arriving at the appointed time to find some other captain still gassing up or tying lines or buying bait or what have you.
Those guys are not sitting on ready.
It’s not as easy as it sounds.
That’s because there is so much to be ready for. That’s a fact anyone who works in the West deals with on a daily, if not hourly, if not minute-to-minute basis. A hot morning yields an afternoon thunderstorm, a cold night blankets the ranch in snow, an inexplicable rip in the fence blows up your evening plans.
On any given day, Harwell can fish from shore, deep-sea fish, or hit the rivers. Figuring out which will be best on any particular day requires Harwell to tap a deep knowledge of weather, water level, fish patterns, and more. Sitting on ready means knowing all of that and applying it amid ever-changing conditions. If you’ve ever watched the forecast, kept an eye on gathering clouds, monitored the wind, watched for smoke on the horizon or coming over the hills, you know the kind of vigilance required.
When clouds like this appear, Capt. Frank has to decide, and quickly, whether there is any danger and how to avoid it. Here, there’s time for one last cast before a juvenile typhoon slams the sound.
Besides wearing the hats of a birder, biologist, historian, fisherman, and prophet, Harwell’s also got to be a meteorologist and ship’s captain. Starting three days before our trip, he studied the tides, the wind, the water level, the air temperature.
An unusual convergence of north winds and low tide created “negative tide,” meaning there was less water than usual. That’s why we wound up pulling trout out of Blakely River instead of some other fish out of the gulf.
On a typical morning, Harwell gets up at 2. He checks and rechecks wind and wave apps. He also usually pilots his boat out in the dark to confirm what the apps say. While he’s out there, he sometimes catches live bait. As dawn arrives, he talks with fellow guides to see what they’re thinking and hearing.
And then his guests arrive and he takes them fishing. When I got to the put-in spot at 8 a.m, I didn’t break stride before walking right onto his boat. We launched within seconds.
We returned to the dock at noon — in this case, nine hours into Harwell’s workday — and his work continued long after I left the boat. He scrubbed it clean and flushed the engine. Before he went out again, he made sure all the gear was ready for all the types of fishing he might do, stocked up on bait, and checked the weather before plotting his next outing.
The more prep work he did, the more fish his customers would catch, the more fun they would have.
And that was all in a day’s — no, a lifetime’s — work.
Capt. Frank Harwell’s son Colby doing a little deckhand work, cleaning fish in a downpour and discussing culinary techniques for clients to prepare their fish later.
Getting A Guide? Here’s How Not To Be An Annoying Client
Capt. Frank Harwell has a sign on his boat that his son gave him: “When all else fails, try doing what the captain suggested.”
That’s as good a place as any to start if you want to be a good client for a guide like Harwell. Some of his tips are obvious. Be on time. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t bring glass bottles with you. Others are surprising.
Don’t ghost him. If you have to cancel, tell him. And be proactive even if the plans haven’t changed — drop him a text that says I’m in town, see you tomorrow, or whatever. Respond when he texts you.
Be willing to learn. Most of the people he guides have never fished or fished very little.
Wait your turn. “I had six people last week on a trip. I said, ‘Now look, we’re going to have to take turns and only fish like three or four rods at a time.’ Well, everybody started getting bites, and next thing I know, all six of them have a rod, and four of them got a fish on. There’s nothing wrong with that, but they just get excited.”
No spray sunscreen. This is a relatively new development. It stains everything orange, and the only way to “clean” it, is for the sun to bleach it out, and that takes a long time.
Don’t bring your own gear. You won’t need it. He’s got plenty. “I have a lot of people that bring too much stuff. We hardly have room to walk around. Travel light.”
From our July 2025 issue.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy of Frank Harwell
