Lake Seminole Catfishing With A U.S. Marine

I’ve always been proud of my nephew, Kennon. Being the son of my twin brother, Corey, he was right between us on many of our outdoor excursions.

He has shown to be very active and fearless, hunting everything from ducks to alligators. I remember on one occasion, while I was wading through a chilly swamp in January and wearing insulated waders looking for a downed duck, Kennon walked the bank and asked if I needed help? Knowing he didn’t have waders on, I jokingly said, “come on in.” To my surprise, he did so. I should have known better.  He was probably only around the age of eight.

Fast forward a decade. He has joined the Marines and has been going to Okinawa, Japan for a couple of years. Finally, after a long deportment, he had the opportunity to return home for a short period. Knowing this, I knew we needed to plan a fishing trip together. We worked out a scheme to catch catfish at Lake Seminole while using jugs made out of pool noodles. We were also going to stretch out some trotlines. If we had spare time on our hands, we would fish for speckled perch.

We launched from  Ten Mile Still Landing on March 8, on a cold, rainy morning. We put out more than 100 jugs baited with chicken breast and a small amounts of livers. It didn’t take long for the jugs to take action. The first fish was a 14-lb. blue catfish. After catching a few more about the same size, we knew there was no way we needed to or could fish with the trotlines or fish for speckled perch. Fish after fish,  you could only imagine the fun we were having.

At one moment within the excitement, the boat motor stopped working and just wouldn’t crank back up.  I noticed the kill switch key was missing from the motor’s handle. Knowing we needed to improvise, Corey suggested we use the twine we found in the water earlier that day while picking up loose litter. I wrapped it around the switch, and it cranked back up the first try. We fished until we had no more room in both the common-sized coolers that were in the boat. We ended up with 28 fish, with a mixture of sizes of both blue and channel catfish. We agreed that we would remember this day for the time we spent together and how well it went. I look forward to spending more quality time with Kennon while he’s here before departing back to Japan, proudly serving his nation.