Four Fish, One Skillet, and a Nine Footer
Yes — you can catch and cook your supper canoe camping the Satilla River in late summer: on this two-night trip BWJ took bream and catfish from a sandbar camp and fried them the same evening, while scouting a roughly nine-foot alligator ahead of Georgia gator season.
Two nights on the Satilla with Tina in the bow, and one job that mattered more than the fishing: gator season was coming, and we needed to know where the big ones live.
The river answered the supper question first. Bream and catfish off the sandbar, cleaned at the water's edge, four fish in one skillet over the fire. We said our blessing over it and ate what we caught the same evening it was swimming. There is not a restaurant in Georgia that can plate that.
The scouting answered the other question. He came up the far bank in the last good light, and when a gator is that size you do not need him close to know it. Nine foot, maybe better. We marked the stretch, watched him slide off, and let him be. That is the one worth coming back for.
Night two was steaks we brought from home and a quieter fire. The Satilla in late August runs low and warm, sandbars standing tall out of the tannin water, and a loaded canoe still finds its line if you read the bends honest.
The film runs the whole trip uncut: the catch, the skillet, the scout, and the spot we will not name too precisely. Some coordinates you keep in the family.