Some couples split the household chores and call it teamwork. Lindsey and Blake Walters went further: each turned a childhood dream into a working business on the Alabama Gulf Coast, and each one’s success quietly made the other’s possible. She owns Salon Coral on South Section Street in Fairhope, a high-end hair salon she has pursued since she was ten years old. He is the Fairhope Fly Guy, a licensed captain who poles a 16-foot skiff across shallow saltwater flats, hunting for redfish with fly anglers. Together, they are the dream team, and their story is a case study in mutual support and shared vision.
From a Nashville Aveda Salon to South Section Street
Lindsey is a native Texan who grew up “all over,” the daughter of a pastor, with most of her growing-up years spent in Nashville. At 16, she went to work at an Aveda salon and knew immediately that she had found her calling. The salon was owned by Marabeth Hough, whose sister Julianne Hough rose to fame as a dancer and whose brother Derek Hough became one of the most famous faces in American dance. The celebrity orbit was real: Lindsey did Derek Hough’s hair before he appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show and worked on other celebrities during her early career.
After cosmetology school, two decades as a working stylist, and an associate’s degree in business, she opened her own salon in Fairhope four years ago. The name carries the family story. Coryl was the name of Blake’s grandmother, and it was the name the couple had chosen for a future daughter. Then they had two boys. So Lindsey named the salon her “baby” instead, altering the spelling to Coral for a coastal vibe, and put everything she had into it.
The clients who followed her from her previous chairs are the foundation she credits most. “I want everyone who comes through the door to have a high-end experience,” she says. That means hot towels, and hand, neck, and head massages folded into the shampoo process. “I take pride in pampering my guests and giving them a relaxing experience as they are being transformed.” Four stylists work alongside her, and they are available for new clients, a rarity in a town where good stylists book out weeks in advance.
Blake, meanwhile, played a huge but quieter role in the salon’s rise. “I am fully involved,” he says. The list of hats he wears behind the scenes is long: handyman, IT department, accountant, and web designer. It is the kind of invisible labor that keeps a small business alive, and Lindsey is quick to name it.
From a Fishing Rod on Campus to a Career on the Flats
Blake grew up in the Grand Bay area of Mobile County, where his father liked to spearfish and often left the boy on the boat, which is where his love of fishing began. He fished farm ponds, creeks, and bayous all over the place, the restless education of a kid who would rather hold a rod than anything else.
He met Lindsey in Nashville, where they both attended Trevecca Nazarene University. Blake arrived as a music business major, but the fishing rod he carried across campus changed his trajectory. The Dean of Students saw him walking with it one day and recruited him to help start a bass fishing team. That accident of visibility turned into a career: Blake turned pro and fished kayak tournaments for Old Town Canoe and Ocean Kayaks, two of the best-known names in the paddle-fishing world, at a time when kayak tournament fishing was booming nationally.
Then came the corporate years, with jobs that required extensive travel and long stretches away from home. When Lindsey’s salon succeeded, it became the catalyst for a change the family had been circling for years. Blake left the road for the water, and today his favorite pastime is his occupation.
The Fairhope Fly Guy
As the Fairhope Fly Guy, Blake is a USCG-licensed captain who specializes in sight fishing the shallow saltwater flats around the coastal area, targeting redfish, black drum, jack crevalle, and occasionally tarpon. The discipline he practices is one of fishing’s most demanding forms. In sight fishing, the angler spots the fish first, casts precisely to it, and watches the fish decide, all in clear water with no room for error. Redfish, Alabama’s state saltwater fish, are famous for tailing on the flats, their signature black-spotted tails breaking the surface as they root for crabs. Tarpon, the “silver king,” add a touch of the exotic when they show up in the shallows in warmer months.
Most of Blake’s clients are vacationers staying in Orange Beach, and he loves the kind of angler fly fishing attracts. They come for the challenge of a skilled sport rather than a cooler full of fish, and the entire operation is strictly catch-and-release, an ethic long central to saltwater fly fishing that keeps the fishery healthy and the fish wary, which is exactly what makes the next cast worthwhile.
The geography of his best spots is a closely guarded secret. When asked where he fishes, he declined to say, and the caution has roots: when he first started fishing these shallows, other fishermen were territorial and let him know it, and some haters showed up on his social media. The dynamic has matured with the fishery. There are now only three saltwater fly fishing guides working these waters, and the three of them get along, sending each other overflow bookings rather than competing them away. Community Fly Supply in Gulf Shores has also been instrumental in building his business, a reminder of how a specialty shop can anchor an entire niche.
Summer is his busiest season, packed with vacationing clients, but Blake says he likes winter fishing best. The water is clear, temperatures are milder, and there are fewer summer thunderstorms to cut days short. Clear winter water is precisely what a sight fisherman wants: the fish have to be visible to be caught.
What Comes Next
The couple’s next projects read like a blueprint for the life they have been building. First is finishing the house they are building themselves, with Blake serving as the contractor, which will include guest lodging for fishing clients to stay. Beyond that, they hope to purchase a commercial building to house both Salon Coral and the Fairhope Fly Guy under one roof, keeping the dream team, literally, under one roof too.
There is a familiar saying that if you do what you love, the money will follow. The Walters version is a little more grounded: two people who each did the unglamorous work, one behind a salon chair, one behind a spreadsheet and a skiff, while refusing to let go of the dreams they started with. Fairhope, happily, is a town where that formula still finds room to work.