Captain Troy Frady — Distraction Charters
How I ended up trading a coat and tie for salt air and an open sky — and why, after 24 years, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Captain Troy Frady aboard Distraction Charters in Orange Beach, Alabama.
My parents had a plan for my life.
Get an education. Get a good job. Work hard. Be responsible. Take care of your family.
It was a perfectly good plan.
I just didn’t follow it exactly the way either one of us expected.
I went to the University of Alabama, served in the United States Navy, got married, started a family and went to work trying to make a living.
Like a lot of people, I was also trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Apparently that can take a while.
Aviation was one of my dreams.
I became a commercial pilot and loved flying.
But timing has a lot to do with life. There were plenty of experienced pilots competing for good flying jobs, and loving airplanes didn’t necessarily mean I could make the kind of living a growing family required.
Dreams mattered.
So did paying the bills.
I tried banking next.
Banking back then was pretty good at handing out titles. Money was another matter.
Eventually I found transportation, trucking and air freight.
That suited me.
It was hands-on. I liked operations. I liked solving problems. And I wasn’t afraid to climb into an 18-wheeler and drive one myself when that was what needed to be done.
For a good while, that worked.
I spent years building a career in transportation and logistics, and it provided a good living for my family.
In August 2000, the company I worked for announced that we were being sold to FedEx in October.
At about the same time, something considerably more important was happening.
Both my parents got sick and needed help
I uprooted my family and moved so I could help take care of them.
Looking back, that was one of the major turning points in my life.
Jobs come and go. Companies merge. Titles change. Paychecks get replaced by other paychecks.
Parents don’t.
After losing both of mine within a relatively short period, I found myself in a place I hadn’t expected to be.
I had spent years trying different careers, raising a family, paying bills, making some good decisions and a few I probably wouldn’t repeat.
Some things worked beautifully.
Some didn’t.
Some worked for a long time and then life changed.
Through all of it, I kept trying to make it happen and figure out how to make a living in an ever changing world.
When my parents were gone and my old career was changing, I had another decision to make.
I could find another coat-and-tie job.
I could start climbing another ladder.
Or I could try something completely different.
For years I had been trying to “make it happen,” even though I wasn’t always sure exactly what it was.
Now I had an old Hatteras sportfishing boat, a lot of work ahead of me and absolutely no guarantee that any of it would work.
So I did it anyway.
In 2002, I rebuilt the boat and started Distraction Charters in Orange Beach, Alabama.
I started Distraction Charters in 2002. I didn’t have everything figured out. I just kept trying to make it happen.
After months of restoring the boat, I told my wife I was thinking about naming her Rock n Reel.
She said, “No. Name it Distraction.”
I asked laughingly, “Because of attention deficit disorder?”
She said, “No. Because that boat is a distraction to our marriage.”
And just like that, Distraction was born.
Looking back, the name fits better than I ever imagined.
Families today are pulled in a hundred directions. Work, school, phones, schedules and responsibilities compete for everyone’s attention.
Sometimes what we need is a good distraction.
Salt air. An open sky. Bent poles. Kids laughing. A few hours when nobody has to be anywhere else.
I’ll be the first to admit I’m probably not the best fisherman on the Gulf Coast.
I’ve never needed to be.
What I do have is 24 years of continuing to try to make deep sea fishing fit my definition of what is should be.
I’ve learned when to stay on a spot, when to move to another, when to change the plan and when to quit trying to make the fish read the same fishing report I did.
Some days taught me more than others.
Some plans worked. Some didn’t.
But I kept showing up, paying attention and trying to get it right.
And somehow, here I am.
Charter fishing also taught me something I probably didn’t understand when I started.
Most families aren’t coming fishing to find out how good a fisherman their captain is.
They’re coming because they want to catch fish themselves.
A dad may remember somebody taking him fishing when he was a boy. Now he wants his own children to feel that pull on the other end of the line.
Mom may have never been offshore before.
Grandpa may be perfectly happy watching his grandchildren catch fish.
And sometimes the kid who looked a little nervous leaving the marina is the one who won’t put the fishing rod down.
Those are the things I remember.
My job is to operate the boat, make good decisions and put you where you have an opportunity to catch fish.
Your deckhands job is to help you make the most of that opportunity.
But when your son or daughter catches their first red snapper, they caught it.
When Mom catches the biggest fish of the day after announcing she wasn’t really interested in fishing, that’s her fish.
When Grandpa watches three generations of his family fishing together, that’s their memory.
Your deckhand and I are there to help make those moments possible.
We don’t need to be the heroes of your fishing story.
You do.
Family has shaped the way I think about every guest who steps aboard.
I’ve been fortunate to have some good deckhands work beside me since I started in 2002.
Several eventually moved on, and four started businesses of their own.
I hope they learned something about business and great customer service working with me.
I know I learned something from each them.
Sam has been with me since 2020.
If you’re reading this page before booking, I’m probably the captain you’ve been researching. But once we start fishing, Sam is the person you and your family will spend much of the day beside.
He has something that’s difficult to teach.
He makes people comfortable.
He can show someone who has never held a fishing rod what to do without making them feel inexperienced. He can work with an excited kid, joke with Dad, help Grandpa and somehow recognize when somebody needs a hand and when they just need a little encouragement.
Customers relate to him.
And that’s important to me.
Sam and I have different jobs aboard the boat, but we’re working toward the same thing:
Giving your family a fishing trip that felt worth taking.
That means finding fish, helping you catch them, keeping the day comfortable and enjoyable, and doing our part so you step off the boat feeling like you made the right choice.
At the end of the trip, Sam cleans the fish while I get started cleaning the boat and making sure it is ready for the next trip. If he finishes first, he helps me. If I finish first, I help him.
Neither one of us leaves the dock until we’re both finished.
That’s how we work.
We’re a team, and the trip belongs to you.
Meet Sam McClaren and learn more about the guy you’ll be fishing beside
If you’re old enough to remember the television show Magnum, P.I., I’m pretty easy to recognize around the marina.
I look a lot like Tom Selleck.
Only different.
When I started charter fishing, I was mostly thinking about how to make a living from the Gulf.
Over the years, that changed.
I’ve been fortunate enough to fish the same part of the Gulf for a long time.
I’m not the best fisherman on the Gulf, and I’ve never pretended to be.
But after 24 years of showing up, you start noticing little things.
You notice the fish. You notice the seasons. You notice what changes and what stays the same.
I don’t know everything about the Gulf or its fishery.
But I’ve learned to pay attention.
Somewhere along the way, the question in my head changed.
For most of my life I was trying to figure out how to make a living from the Gulf.
Eventually I started thinking about what I could do for the Gulf in order to give back to her.
That question led me deeper into fishery conservation and management and eventually to serving as an Alabama for-hire representative and voting member of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council.
I don’t see that as something to brag about.
I see it as a responsibility to future generations of families and anglers.
We still fish hard.
There are plenty of fish to catch, poles to bend and good meals to bring home.
I want families to catch fish. I want kids excited. I want you to take fish home for dinner.
What has changed over 24 years is my definition of enough.
I don’t believe a successful fishing trip has to be measured by how many fish we can legally put in the box.
Our philosophy is pretty simple:
Keep the best. Release the rest.
Take what you need, not what you can.
Have a great experience.
Catch fish.
Take some home for dinner.
And leave something swimming for the kid who comes next.
After more than two decades of charter fishing, I finally found a pretty simple way to describe what I hope happens aboard Distraction.
I call it, Bent poles and smiling faces.
We fish hard because catching fish matters.
But the longer I’ve done this, the more I’ve realized that the fish are only part of what people take home.
They remember their first fish.
They remember somebody losing one right beside the boat.
They remember Dad getting out-fished by his daughter.
They remember laughing together.
Those experiences became the idea behind a song called “Bent Poles and Smiling Faces.”
Listen to “Bent Poles and Smiling Faces”
A story about what a day aboard Distraction has come to mean to me.
Three generations sharing a day on the Gulf. That’s the kind of fishing story I like being part of.
Of course I want your family to catch fish.
But I hope you take home something that lasts longer than the fish in the freezer.
Maybe it’s your child’s first fish.
Maybe it’s Grandpa watching his grandson do something he once did with his own father.
Maybe it’s Mom catching the biggest fish.
Maybe it’s nothing more complicated than everybody laughing about something that happened on the boat.
Maybe it’s a story that gets told around the dinner table ten years from now.
Those are your stories.
Sam and I just get to be part of them.
Life has a funny way of teaching you what matters, usually after you’ve spent a lot of time thinking something else mattered more.
I spent years trying to make it happen.
Aviation. Banking. Transportation. A coat and tie. Raising a family. Making mistakes. Starting over. Trying something else.
I just kept going.
Eventually all those different roads brought me here.
An old Hatteras.
Salt air.
An open sky.
People I enjoy taking fishing.
A deckhand I’m proud to work beside.
And enough fish out there to keep the poles bent.
People sometimes ask me how long I’m going to keep doing this.
I don’t really know.
But I know this:
If somebody walked down the dock tomorrow and offered me any other job in the world, I’d turn them down.
I’m a charter boat captain.
I’m content.
Turns out that’s more than enough.
And my hope is that long after I’m gone, somebody else’s grandkids will still have a Gulf full of possibilities waiting for them.
We probably ought to go fishing together.
You may also call or text me at 251-975-8111.
If you’re wondering about the qualifications behind the story, here are the basics.
Distraction Charters
Orange Beach Marina, Slip E-12
27075 Marina Road
Orange Beach, Alabama 36561
Call or text: 251-975-8111
We regularly serve families staying in Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, Fort Morgan, Perdido Key, and throughout the Alabama Gulf Coast.
Park in the lot on the right marked in yellow. Walk west along the marked route past the restaurant and toward the left side of the dock store.
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