Dayboat seafood, straight off the boat in Fairhope
Most seafood sold on the Gulf Coast changes hands several times before it reaches a kitchen. It is bought from suppliers, held on longline boats or in cold storage, shipped, warehoused and finally set out in a display case. The folks behind Fairhope Fish House built their business on the opposite model: fish that was swimming in the Gulf of Mexico a day earlier, caught by local crews, and sold directly to neighbors the next morning.
Dustin Bedgood and Jake Pose, two local anglers who decided to turn a love of fishing into a livelihood, opened the business around 2019. In the early days they could be found at the Fairhope Farmers Market on Thursday afternoons behind the public library, selling fresh-caught tuna out of a large cooler from a small booth. From there the operation grew into a full market at the intersection of Greeno Road (U.S. Highway 98) and Scenic Highway 98, with space to offload the catch, clean and ready the boats, and a cooler and retail counter for walk-in customers.
What “dayboat” means
The method is known as dayboat fishing, and the name is literal. Crews run out of the Gulf in sportfishing catamarans — a 33-foot Freeman and a 31-foot Ameracat have anchored the fleet, with a third large catamaran added as the business grew — and target deep-water fish like tuna and swordfish. On reef trips the boats bring back red snapper and grouper, and inshore waters supply flounder. Because the fish is sold locally within roughly 24 hours of being caught, it never sits in a distribution chain.
“It’s my dream job,” Bedgood has said of the work. The offshore ground fishing can run deep — barrelfish, a local delicacy many shoppers have never heard of, come from 1,100 to 1,200 feet of water. Beyond their own landings, the shop contracts with local and regional fishermen to round out the counter with crab meat, oysters, shrimp, Florida stone crab claws, and regional specialties such as golden tilefish and wreckfish. Frozen staples like scallops, amberjack and Atlantic salmon round out the case, often at package discounts.
The daily email and the restaurant list
The shop’s best marketing tool costs nothing to join. Customers who sign up for the daily email get first crack at whatever came off the boat, listed item by item — red snapper, gag grouper, amberjack, black drum, yellowtail snapper, shucked oysters, crab meat, whatever the Gulf provided that day. First come, first served.
The email also lists which local restaurants will be serving the same day’s catch, a detail that has turned it into a kind of coast-wide dining guide. On a given morning the list has included Fairhope Inn, Hope Farm, Little Bird, Oakley’s and Southwood in Fairhope, Hummingbird Way in Mobile, and Red or White’s shops in both cities. Diners who read the email know what to order before they sit down.
From market booth to full-service operation
Growth has come steadily. The business bought the former H&M Golf Cart building in Barnwell to process fish with the boats brought directly to the facility, and a third boat was being built and outfitted with an experienced young deckhand working toward his captain’s license. The crews also run a charter operation out of Fairhope and Orange Beach: half-day inshore trips on a 24-foot Blazer Bay for tripletail — Bedgood’s favorite to eat — speckled trout, sheepshead and flounder, and full-day offshore trips for up to six adults chasing tuna, swordfish, grouper, snapper and amberjack.
Bedgood and his wife Johanna live in Foley with their twins, Logan and Reese. Pose grew up on Dauphin Island and settled in Daphne with his wife Jill, a Fairhope native — Fairhope Fish House regulars may have met Jill and the family’s golden retriever, Fin, selling yellowfin tuna and shop t-shirts at the farmers market booth.
How to get some
The retail shop at 13550 Greeno Road is open Thursday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with free shipping on purchases over $50. In season, live crawfish by the sack and boiled crawfish ready for a party join the cooler. Weekly specials — frozen packages, amberjack sales — go out in the daily email.
Regulars have their own traditions with the daily list, too. One longtime customer swears by snapper throats — the gristly, intensely flavorful cut most markets throw away — which the shop has sold when the boats come in loaded. That is the dayboat difference in miniature: nothing good goes to waste, and the customers who pay attention eat the best of it first.
For a birthday dinner on the grill or a weeknight fry, the pitch is simple: fish landed by neighbors, filleted while you wait, and on your table within a day of the catch. Around Fairhope, that is not a niche product. It is just how dinner gets done.