Our story
Your kid does the fishing.
Joe and Katie started North Florida Fishing Camp in the summer of 2020. Joe teaches high school and holds a degree in Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering; Katie teaches elementary school. Both are Coast Guard licensed captains.
The whole camp runs on one idea: kids learn by doing it themselves. Campers bait their own hooks, throw their own cast nets, fight their own fish and net their own fish. They get wet, they get dirty, they tangle a line and lose a fish — and then they figure out what happened and get it right on the next one. Captains and counselors teach right beside them; they don’t reel it in for them.
On the boat, campers work as a team: one on the rod, one on the net, one calling out the fish. By Friday they’re rigging their own rods, reading the tide table and cheering for each other’s catch.
Across a week we try to fish every kind of water we have — the backwater creeks, the St. Johns River, the jetties, the beach and the bluewater offshore — and go looking for sharks along the way. Weather decides the order.
Seven summers and more than 1,500 kids later, it’s still a family camp. Joe and Katie are at the dock every morning, the same charter captains come back summer after summer, and a lot of our campers come back too.
Joe Carraway
Co-founder · Director · Lead instructor
Florida certified teacher at Terry Parker High School. B.S. in Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering. Runs the head boat and the offshore days, and teaches the seamanship and how-boats-work lessons himself.
- Florida certified teacher
- Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering
- USCG licensed captain
Katie Carraway
Co-founder · Co-director
Elementary school teacher and front and center every day of camp — rosters, medical forms, counselor schedules and every parent question. If you call during camp week, there’s a good chance Katie answers.
- Educator
- USCG licensed captain
- CPR certified
