Photo by Madoline Markham.
Instafishing
Mountain Brook Junior High School seventh-graders Jack Alexander and Luke Black started the Instagram account reel.southern.fishing.
It all started in kindergarten at Brookwood Forest Elementary.
Luke Black had a picture of an eel he had caught at Cape Sand Blas, and Jack Alexander had one of a shark he caught in Naples, Florida. They shared the photos with one another, and before long they were banned from reading fish books because they looked at them too much.
Seven years later, the boys still talk fishing nonstop and have now taken their passion to social media. Their reel.southern.fishing Instagram account now has more than 1,500 followers, and it only started this summer.
“Sometimes it’s almost like they are talking in a different language,” Luke’s dad, Lance Black, said.
Jack said the Instagram was the result of “summer boredom.” He and Luke started off by sharing their own pictures and following other fishing accounts. Before long, people were direct messaging them pictures of their catches. Now the boys cull through the submissions to select ones to post daily, adding a few words for a caption and a host of hashtags to get more traction.
“It comes down to who has the best picture,” Jack said of their photo selection.
So far the account has run one lure giveaway. The winner lived outside Buffalo, New York.
The boys never reveal their identity, so likely most of the reel.southern.fishing followers have no idea that it’s 12-year-olds behind it.
“[Jack] knows more about it at 12 than I will ever know,” Jack’s dad, Chris Alexander, said.
Jack remembers the weight of seemingly every fish he has caught and has encyclopedic knowledge of anything and everything fishing, most of which he learned from YouTube videos.
Since the boys became friends, their families have, too. They now co-own a house on a private lake in North Carolina where the boys fish for bass and trout, often documenting it on a GoPro.
They also shore fish, bay fish and deep sea fish on other family trips. If they go out fishing with other friends, Luke and Jack are always the ones to pull the hook out of the fish’s mouth. They also clean their own fish.
“Most of our friends say they like fishing, and we take them out and they just want to swim,” Jack said.
The boys are now working on a T-shirt design for reel.southern.fishing.
“Around here they like anything with ‘Southern’ in it” Jack said.
Still, as the reel.southern.fishing brand grows, their primary focus remains on the reels, the bait and the catch.
“The feeling when the fish is on the end is the best thing in the world,” Luke said.
