Meet your Captain Tom Ard, a true Orange Beach native and a 5 boat owner at Zekes landing Marina, with over 40 years of offshore fishing experience.
The love for fishing started at a very young age for Tom, fishing farm ponds and rivers around his house for bass and bream, or catching speckled trout and red fish off the family dock on Wolf Bay. This all transitioned to offshore fishing when his father, Captain Gloyice Ard had a custom built charter boat, a Buskins, completed 1980, the “Bollweevil” which is still in service here at Zekes.
Tom grew up deck handing on the Bollweevil and ran his first real charter at 18 years old. He inherited the vessel after his dad passed away.
After graduating from UWF with a degree in criminal justice, Tom married his love of his life Kim, in 1997. They purchased the Fairwater II in 1998. Since then he’s charter fished, raised a family ( son Garrett is working on his Masters degree at Mississippi State) and cared for the boat, trying to make her a better boat each and every year. Along the way they purchased the Water Dog, a 34 ft crusader, continued fishing on the Bollweevil. In 2019 he and business partner Captain Brett Russell added the SouthWind and the TradeWinds in 2022. Captain Brett started his fishing career at just 16 years old working with us during the summer.
Training young men into captains has been one of Tom’s strengths, along with having a fishing team that feels like a family. We all work together and help each other with the boats and in fishing which gives the whole fleet an advantage.
One of Tom’s passions has been finding older boats and making them look new again with a strong knowledge about engines, generators, and very importantly electronics that keep you safe and help catch fish. This has been his hobby inside his fishing career.
In his 50s now, Tom still has a passion for hunting,and fishing, going on adventures with his family (which includes his two Labrador retrievers) and boats. Tom also runs a 64 ft Viking sports fisher for his lifelong friend, fishing marlin tournaments, traveling on vacations just to hunt and fish, and still loves a good boat ride on an impressive craft.
And lastly he really loves to watch the joy and excitement catching fish brings to his clients and friends who still come back to fish year after year.