This article is from the spring 2025 edition of Mobile Baykeeper’s print quarterly, CURRENTS. The magazine is mailed to active members who have given more than $50 in the past year. To get on the magazine’s mailing list, donate here.
By Caine O’Rear
Every Delta fisherman knows Droopy Williams. Or at least knows of him. You’ve probably seen him as you’ve zoomed along the Causeway – a sort of roving landmark, sometimes in the waters above, sometimes below.
For nearly six decades he has been a shrimper for the bait shops along that raised ground between Spanish Fort and the city. I say shops. Once there were a dozen or more, but now there is only one.
Droopy Williams grew up in the Delta in a cabin on the Tensaw River at Cloverleaf Landing. He was raised by his grandparents. Since he was a kid he has been called by that name. He says most folks don’t know his real name (don’t expect to get it here) but there is one who does – his aunt is Lucy “Pie” Hollings, proprietress of the Cloverleaf boat launch and a local Delta legend. The family lived off the land and water when he was growing up; crabbing, running trotlines, and raising hogs and cows on Gravine Island just across the river. They were different days indeed.
These days, driving into Mobile in the early morning hours you might catch him working the Blakeley River in his 24-foot trawler, the words LIVE BAIT painted in bold red lettering on the side. It’s a reassuring sight. For all the change behind us and all that lies ahead, no matter what comes you can rest assured that the sun rises, the sun goes down, and that Droopy is out there catching shrimp.
At age thirteen he went to work for Autrey’s Fish Camp, as soon as school let out for summer, and it was during those summer months that he first lived on the Causeway with Billy and Queenie Wright, who ran the shop. It was the mid-1960s and everybody fished. In those days you could rent boats by the hour at Autrey’s or Stauter Boat Works, and try your luck for redfish or trout on your lunch break. It was a sort of Golden Age, but of course all that changed in ’69 when Camille showed up like a woman scorned and let everyone know the party was over.
In his years on the water, Droopy has seen all manner of change. There has been sustained development, increased dredging operations, and an oil spill, to name just a few of the things that have left their mark. These days the shrimp are smaller and the fish are less plentiful. There are more gators and bald eagles, but less snakes. The hogs his family once raised on Gravine Island are no more, but their progeny now run wild and roam the woods of the upper Delta. There is only one bait shop left standing on the Causeway, for which he still supplies shrimp, and as Williams is a bait shrimper, not a licensed commercial operator, he can only sell directly to bait shops.
Droopy is the only Black shrimper on the local scene — a fact he seems to take pride in. He’s tried to take on numerous deckhands, but it’s tough work and most can’t cut it, so these days he prefers to work solo. He says he doesn’t mind going it alone though: every changing wind and tide is like a greeting from an old friend.
Today he lives on Cloverleaf Landing, just up the road from where he grew up, shrimping in the morning and fishing for bream most afternoons, and he says there is no better place on earth to live.
We met up with him one cold, January morning at Cloverleaf when the tide was low. We couldn’t launch the boat, so we stood on the bank and heard his many tales of a life on the water.
The name Droopy
Droopy: I was going to school on a cold day just like today. I used to be drooped over like this because I thought I was being cute. I had been working since I was twelve years old and had money in my pocket. You know how it is when you think you’re being cute around girls and stuff? You don’t wear much clothing like everybody else. I would be cold and I would be drooped over like this and they started calling me Droopy. Ever since the ninth grade, everybody calls me Droopy.
First day shrimping
It was in the ’60s. I was 13. Back then we had wooden doors on the back of the boat, and a little old 16-foot net, on a Stauter-Built boat. The first time I tried to go out, I was young and not paying attention and the ropes got wrapped around my foot…. and I’m trying to turn the gear-shift down and get my foot out of the rope.
With shrimping, you’re going to learn from your mistakes. You make a mistake that you’re not going to want to make no more out there, because it’s quick, and it just happens so fast on the water. I tell folks all the time: if it can happen, one day it will happen. I have fallen overboard before. The worst could happen out there one day. I pray every time I go out. I ask the Lord to bless me and watch over me. There’s so much stuff on the water you don’t see. You pray that the Lord watch over you for things you don’t see. You’re fine with the things you do see.
Growing up Cloverleaf
We had cows and hogs up on Gravine Island. We had what you call “Killin’ Day.” Go up there and kill something and bring it back in for the family. We lived off the fat of the land. We made everything. We ground our own corn. Everything we had, we made it, except stuff like flour, sugar, baking powder. A lot of the hogs they’re saying are wild now were just some of our hogs that got away and stranded off of Gravine Island, and started populating all over the place.
It started changing when people starting buying the land along the river. They weren’t poachers but you didn’t know who it was.
I lived with my grandaddy and grandmother. And then after Clarise died, Aunt Pie took over. There used to be a little bait shop my grandaddy owned. That was all done in ’66 and stuff. Me and my brother, we lived with Billy and Queenie Rice for about three years at Miss Autrey’s Fishing Camp. We didn’t come home. When school got out for the final day, they were sitting in our yard waiting for us to get out and go to work.
I was making money. It wasn’t a whole lot of money but it didn’t take a whole lot of money back in ’66. It was a whole different scene, with Lawrence Stauter around. Everyone was like family, back then.
The competition
The hardest part today is the era that we shrimp in. You got some guys who throw off five or ten minutes before daylight, and we’re not supposed to throw off till daylight. Everybody’s trying to beat the other guy to it. So the competition is getting harder and harder.
At 5:30 in the morning, when the shrimp are out there in October and November, you have nine other bait boats out there, shrimping in the Blakeley River. Most times you get one or two good drags in. The rest of the time you’re scratching for bait. If you don’t get all you want in two drags … you might be out there till twelve or one o’ clock, because there are so many boats.
The best
I got people — I don’t know why — who think I’m the best shrimper that ever put a net in the water. But I’m not good with all the technology stuff. The young guys, they pinpoint and they pinpoint. You go out there in the fall and I’m sitting there at the dock waiting for the fog to lift. The young guys get hung up and they mark it. I get hung up, and then I get hung up on it again because I don’t mark it.
When the other guys don’t come in or they don’t catch em, they say, “I guess I better call Droopy to catch some.” But I can’t catch them if they ain’t out there. If they ain’t out there, they just ain’t out there.
Changes
The shrimping has changed so much. Now you have all the restricted areas. We used to could shrimp all throughout the Bay. Now Weeks Bay is closed down for shrimping, and you can’t shrimp over on the Eastern Shore. When we used to shrimp there in the Tensaw — all the commercial boats were there. Shrimp haven’t been big like that in years. It used to be 20 or 30 boats there, and you never ran out of shrimp. The shrimp population has really, really diminished over the years.
I didn’t have my own boat till 2015. I always shrimped for somebody else with a shop boat. Ain’t nothing like having your own rig.
Today bait shrimpers are not allowed to shrimp nowhere hardly. In the ship channel, bait shrimpers are in there fighting with commercial shrimp boats with 50-foot nets. They only allow us to pull a 16-foot net. We got to pull it up within twenty minutes. You never know if [the wardens] are sitting by the Battleship looking at you, and when you get into the dock you got a ticket or something — for dragging too long. We used to could drag as long as we wanted to. We are competing against 50- foot nets. The big boats just push us over out of the way in the channel.
We are the little guys. We got what you call a bait license. We can’t have no more than two baskets of shrimp on the boat at any given time. That’s like a 150 pounds of shrimp — 3,000 shrimp in the tank. It has to be sold to the bait shop. If you pull up to me on the water, I’m not allowed to sell you shrimp. We could lose our license for selling bait off a boat. You got to wait around till the boat come in. And we’ve got to try to keep the shrimp alive. We pretty much didn’t even have pumps on the boat when I come up. We had the Stauter-Built boats where the water rotated in and out, in and out.
The shrimping started changing back in ’99. Most people want to blame it on the oil spill. Everything nowadays is blamed on the oil spill. I don’t know how true it is. Like I said I’ve been doing it all my life. I know there is a big change in shrimping. There was a time around the oil spill when we struggled to catch shrimp. But with everything going on with the crab, the shrimp… there are not as many. You might have two weeks of trout fishing. It’s not that good anymore.
Dredging
I know it hurt us. They might stay in 30 foot of water and dredge. But when they drop that big ball it just leaves a big hole and a lot of times we fall in it and get hung up … We might drag our net trying to rinse the mud out. The dredge always affects us because we sometimes don’t have nowhere else to go but the ship channel [depending on the season]… With the pipeline they were pumping it on the flats and stuff — it changes things a lot.
We know the dredging gotta be done, but when you’re up in an area like this, you can’t dredge this area. Everything is filling in. From Tensaw and Blakeley Point, it used to be deep water. Now, it’s just not that deep. Everything is filling in so much. It’s not for the best.
I think it’s a good thing y’all are doing that you don’t want that mud dumping.. We need dredging but you need to have somewhere to put it. When I used to be out there, they had them dikes and they put it all in Polecat Bay. Now, you’re pumping it out on the flats out there.
Trash in the water
You might see a fish and turtle with an old Wal-Mart bag in the water. Mardi Gras time you find a lot of footballs and different stuff in the water.
I don’t throw nothing out on the water. I catch so much stuff in the shrimp trawl. Ninety percent is stuff that comes from humans. They don’t care. They love to fish but they don’t love to take care of it. Everyone should have a trash can on the boat. A five-gallon bucket or something. I’ve got a bucket where I keep all of my bottles and stuff.
Across the river and back
We learned to swim in this area right here on the Tensaw. We used to swim across the river and back. With the alligators, yes. I never was scared. We did have a cousin who drowned — Sherman. He was standing up in the boat. Throwed him over and he didn’t make it.
There used to be a lot more water moccasins. Very seldom you see one now. When I’m bream fishing I see one or two swim across the creek a year. There used to be so many nutria and stuff. Everything would open up. Then all of this just filled in.
You wouldn’t believe how many alligators are out right now. Normally in December and January you never see gators. But with these warm days we’ve been having, you see plenty of gators out. You see quite a few wild hogs and stuff. I don’t take no gun in the boat out there. It makes you wanna shoot at everything you see, so I don’t take no gun out there.
The old days
There were way more people catching fish. All of the bait shops had pretty good business. Autrey’s Fishing Camp was the number one fishing shop on the Causeway. Competition was plentiful.
Audrey and them had 25 rental boats — all 25 boats would be rented out. We had people fishing that would sit and wait to get a boat to go out.You had some people that weren’t going to stay long. We know who they was and they’d come back in. Me and my brother we’d jump in the boat with a bucket. A lot of the boats didn’t have motors. We’d just paddle the boat out and fish and stuff.
There were three or four gas stations on the Causeway. I remember when gas was 36 cents a gallon. Cheapest gas I ever remembered was right there at Pinto Island.
I was living on the Causeway with the Wrights when Camille come over there. I remember stepping out of the house with power lines down after the hurricane. We were so young, just barefooted, stepping out of the house and feeling the electric shock. We didn’t know what it was. Me and my brother Tippin went down there in 1966 and worked for them. Mrs. Queenie Wright had 70-something boat sheds and all of them had boats in them. By ’89 or something they started stealing motors and stuff off the boats through the night. Then it started getting bad for boat renovating. Me and brother would stay around to keep people from stealing motors at night. All the big-time people kept their boats in the sheds.
Pollution
To my knowledge I haven’t seen much pollution but quite sure there is. With the coal dock, years ago you could go and catch fish at the coal dock and they didn’t taste like nothing. But now you throw a cast net there and catch mullet and hang around that area, you can’t hardly eat them.
Not Lonely
Ninety-five percent of the time I’m out solo. Very seldom I have anybody out on the boat with me. I always welcome somebody to go out with me, and there is always somebody promising me they’ll go with me. Sometime I guess I leave out too early for them. I say, “Be at the dock at 5:30” and they’re not there. They say, “You left.” Well I say, “You wanna go, I gotta go.”
My love for the water and stuff makes me not get lonely. I bream fish a lot. I’ll probably go get my motor and go bream fishing in a minute. A lot of times I fish by myself. It don’t get boring and it don’t get lonely or nothing.
The waves are my friends. I don’t like it when it gets real rough. It’s cool when it’s smooth. After sitting around a while you says, “Ain’t none of my little friends out here today” and then all the sudden the wind will make a ripple in the water and the next thing you know, they’re big friends, the bigger waves.
The doll baby
I once caught a doll baby. I thought I had caught a real baby. That was really really scary stuff — when you pull your net up and you don’t know what you got in it. I saved the doll but I couldn’t tell you where it is now.
Black folks shrimping
Relatives of mine see me going and they went and got boats. As a job, you might have some Black deckhands on some of the big boats. But not in this area, never. Out of all the people I ever took out, my grandson, he could operate it. He could do the wench. But after he got older — he’s 21 now — he likes to go out with me when I go, but he’s not interested in taking over.
The good life
I’m not a bank fisherman. I love to fish out of a boat. I like having access to the water. Fish in the morning, come in and have lunch, and then go back fishing that evening. Lot of times that’s what I’ll do. I’ll saltwater fish in the fall in the morning time, and then I’ll bream fish in the evening time for freshwater fish. Specks, reds, a lot of white trout in the saltwater. We had more white trout this year. Through the years, ever since I been up here, we usually caught white trout. This year we caught white trout weighing two or three pounds. What everybody calls croakers, a trash fish, we catch two-pound croakers up here in June and July, up here at this piling. We fish for them. And always with dead shrimp.
I don’t want to live no place else. Ain’t no place no greater to live. I love the water. I can always just run down here.
This interview was edited and condensed for length. Click here to watch video interviews of Droopy Williams at Cloverleaf.
