Many people claim that bass pros are just “glorified truck drivers.” That may be true, but it doesn’t give much credit to the families who go with them on the road. While the husbands are out fishing, the rest of the family members have to take care of all sorts of other types of business. Indeed, the wives are often the glue that holds the whole operation together. They make the reservations, take care of repairs, deal with homeschooling and all sorts of other tasks, both expected and unexpected.

Julia Kennedy, the mastermind behind team Kennedy (Elite Series pro Steve is her assistant) does more than most, and has seen more than most. If you want proof, just ask her kids, who can tell you more about geography, marine biology and American history than most PhD candidates.

Here’s Julia’s story of Team Kennedy, in her own words.

Half Past First Cast: How did you two meet?

Julia Kennedy: Well it’s an interesting story. My best friend worked at a grocery store here in Auburn, it’s a college town, and she worked with a guy who was in college and her mom would have killed her if she went out with him. So naturally she started dating him. One night she told her mom we were going, air quotes, “to the movies together.” She would go out with her boyfriend and I would sit on his couch, like the biggest loser until they came home. I was just basically her scapegoat. Kind of pathetic.

So “this guy” moved in to the boyfriend’s apartment and when they were going out on one of their dates, they said, you might want to talk to him rather than just sit on the couch like a loser. By the way, his name is Steve.

So I walked into this room and I sat on the edge of the bed and I said, “Hi, I'm Julia.” We never turned the light on, as he's already in bed because he's a fisherman and they go to bed early and wake up early. An hour or two hours or however long their date was I sat there and talked to this guy, the new roommate, named Steve. We talked about everything and anything and a lot about fishing. So the date was over, me and my bestie left and I thought, “He's kind of nice, kind of different,” you know, at least I wasn’t bored.

At some point we finally saw each other. He was like, oh my gosh, she's really kind of cute, but he found out I was 16 and he was 20 and thankfully he was a gentleman. He's like, “No way, you're way too young for me,” and wouldn't have anything to do with me.

So he broke my heart because I really start crushing on him. My girlfriend, you know how that goes, it didn't work out with the boyfriend so I never got to see Steve again. I found out he started dating this really witchy woman and I didn't see him forever.

Fast forward, now I'm in college. I have to be 21, although I can't remember, but I got into the country line dancing bar with all my guy friends. They were all hitting on the other women and I was bored. I'm like, you know what, I'm going to the car to get my purse and I'll catch a ride home with somebody. As I go to walk out, Steve walks in with his sister who was going out to party to celebrate her graduation. Of course it has been a long time since I last saw Steve, I knew I knew the face and then it clicked -- they guy from the dark, the guy I started crushing on who broke my heart.

We made eye contact and strangely enough I had instant feelings. It was weird. I knew I knew him. It’s that guy from the summer who wouldn't have anything to do with me. He asked where I was going and I said, “Home.” He said, “Sit right here at this table.” We spent the entire rest of the night at the table, we never moved from the table. His sister kept coming over to try to bail him out, like, “Who's this woman?”

It's funny, I think Steve was supposed to hook up with one of his sister’s little friends but we sat and talked the entire night. His sister and friends finally were ready to go home and he looked at me and said, “Don't leave. I'm coming right back.” For him that’s huge because you know at that point it is probably like 10 o'clock tonight. So I stayed there and Steve came back and we closed the bar down.

We went and talked some more and then he didn't call me for two weeks. He went back to Atlanta and what's really funny is I thought he'd blown me off again. So I got really mad and I tracked him down. He said, “I called you every night. You were not there.” This is back before Caller ID. I was like, “You didn't call my house phone,” but realized I did go out every night and I wasn’t home -- but then why didn’t he leave messages?

So to prove he actually called me and to get back in my good graces he brought me his phone bill. Proof enough and that was it, we started dating at that moment and the rest is history.

Half Past First Cast: How many years has it been?

Julia Kennedy: Oh God. That was the Year of Our Lord 1994. We got married in 96. I was 23, a mere baby. It's funny, my plan was to lure him in and break his heart and then it backfires. We have too much fun together. And that's awesome.

We got married in 1996, and we waited until 2008 to even think about having kids. So we were together for 12 years before kids. I keep telling people that was because I was trying to figure out if I liked him enough to have his kids. You know how it is, you marry somebody but aren’t really sure you really like them (giggles).

Half Past First Cast: How did you travel in the early years together?

Julia Kennedy: Well, when we were first married we had 9-to-5 jobs. I worked downtown and Steve was a mechanical engineer and fished on the weekends. If the tournament was an in-town BFL, a Redman Tournament Trail or just the weekend series of FLW I would go with him. At this point in time he was trying to qualify to fish the tour.

I can still remember one day I walked in from work -- this is right after 9/11 -- and he had a letter sitting on the stairs. He said, “I qualified for the FLW tour next year and I'm thinking I should, you know, try this professional fishing thing, just go for it.”

I said, ”That's great. I agree with you. When do WE leave?”

He looked up at me, like wait. What? WE?

“Yeah, WE. You're not gonna go to South Florida and I'm not gonna be stuck here hating you.”

So we immediately put almost everything in storage and fished with everything else we had and just went. Our first tournament was at Lake Okeechobee. It was an EverStart. We didn’t have any money. We had an S10 Chevy truck and a Bass Tracker boat and a tent. But it was the three of us me, Steve and Louie. We went down there and we froze our butts off.

Our first tournament was said to have had record breezes for Florida. Remember, we only had a tent. We ran to the Walmart and all the blankets were gone. All the electric blankets are gone. All the heaters are gone. We ran back to the tent, gathered everything we brought for clothing and piled them on top of us trying to stay warm. It was the worst experience I've ever had in a tent and then Steve double zeros in the tournament.

So that was the biggest, you know, how you like, “Yay, this is our dream. We're living it!” Smash! Jump off the cliff with your glider and get caught in a tree.

It was okay because you expect that but it still was tough to swallow.

So we continued camping that way, it worked for us and we didn't really go into huge debt.

Julia Steve Kennedy camping louie jack russell terrier bassmaster

I remember saying that Angie and Todd Faircloth have it really nice in their van. You know, they're living large. They've got walls. They have a roof. But we just didn't want to jump into it backwards and end up financially ruined, so we started out small.

Tournament over, I went home, Steve went to Kentucky Lake. I was going to my cousin's wedding and then getting a good job because we were at that break-even point of, you're going to continue this for five years because you can’t just quit, right? That’s right, you just can't quit, it was do or die. We're doing it for five years and we'll figure out the rest. Apparently Steve figured it out. Steve went to Kentucky Lake and won. So 2003 was a turnaround.

Those first years were very hard. It's one of those things where you look back and think, “How did we live out of a cooler, tent and an S10?” That’s right, because we were young and dumb and we wanted it!

Half Past First Cast: So once you had kids how did you decide to go on the road as a family?

Julia Kennedy: Okay, Sophia was born October 30, 2008 and our first tournament was January 2009. We had a big 40-foot motorhome (we still have it) and so off we went. It was never said that when we decide to have kids that I was going to stay at home. It was, “We have babies now so we just do this with a baby.” Louie, our fur baby, trained us on how to do this baby thing on the road. Everything that you do with a dog, you do with a baby, only you can take the baby into the restaurant. I did realize that there wasn’t too much you have to have when you have a baby. All you really need is food, diapers and that's pretty much it. Oh, clothing is nice, and I would definitely take a spare change but for the most part that’s all you need. All the rest of the stuff that you think that you have to have when you have kids you really don't.

Napping, the schedule and all that, if they're tired you lay them over and they sleep. I have some pictures of my children passed out drunk looking at weigh ins. Screaming loud people, didn’t matter, they just laid over me and slept because I never made it a big deal.

We didn’t have to be quiet. “Shhh, the baby's napping. Don’t run the vacuum, the baby’s sleeping. Whisper, you’ll wake the baby.” NO! Let the dog bark. Ring the doorbell. Continue with your normal day-to-day life. If the kids are tired, in whatever environment they are in, they will sleep. We never changed our routine for them, which they might have to have therapy for later, but that's okay.

They're very, very adaptable in all situations.

The kids were at every blast-off and been to every restaurant at every lake in their pajamas. I didn't make it hard. I didn't get them up and get them dressed and blah blah. It was, “Get in the car. Let's go. This is how we roll.”

Half Past First Cast: All right, so this leads me to the next couple of questions about life on tour. When you are on the road what is your favorite meal that you prepare?

Julia Kennedy: On the road? Well they're not obviously suffering or starving but I hate cooking. My favorite thing to do on the road in the camper? I don’t like to cook, this is a bad question!

Spaghetti!

I do meal prep at home. There's a veggie chicken soup that I make and I put them into the little Ziploc containers. You just pull them out of the freezer and warm them up. I cook chili and spaghetti and put them in freezer bags to pull out on the road. Spaghetti is always so good and so easy and you don't have to have power on in the camper for it. So if we're going down the road, we pull into the rest area and we use the stove top because it is propane. I use hot dog buns and make garlic bread. It's really quick, it's hot, it’s fast and it's homemade.

The kids don’t want to watch me cook or wait a long time for their meal so this is quick and easy and most importantly, they like it.

Half Past First Cast: What restaurants do you look forward to when you're on the road?

Julia Kennedy: Totally not related to bass fishing, there is a restaurant called Red’s Eats in Wiscasset Maine. It's on the side of the road, kind of a dive but not a dive. If you blink you’ll miss it, but we make it must-go and we get a lobster roll every time we are on our way up north.

There used to be this place, I’m not even sure it's still there, Patti's 1880s Settlements at Kentucky Lake. Unique setting but I think it burned down. So sad, the place was really, really good.

Half Past First Cast: What tour stop do the kids like the most?

Julia Kennedy: Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? Lake Kissimmee. You want to know why? Disney Wilderness RV Park. They can’t wait to go there every year and as you ask me this, the Elites are down there fishing but because of COVID we made the smart choice not to go.

The kids also like the St. John’s River. We stay at Salt Springs, we see the manatees and we put our canoes in the water. They like the big campgrounds where they can ride their bikes and be outdoors.

Oh my gosh, the St. Lawrence. They love the St. Lawrence because where we camp they have a little boat ramp and they can go down there and go and catch crawfish and fish for perch. Sophia pretends like she’s too cool for this but she has a blast.

Wherever we go, we find the places with the best surroundings that make it the most fun for everyone.

We took Pete’s advice and did a scavenger to find the big prairie dog (Editor’s Note: When the Elites visited Lake Oahe in South Dakota), took pictures and sent him evidence. The kids just love things like that.

Half Past First Cast: What's your favorite tour stop?

Julia Kennedy: I was just having this discussion earlier with a friend of mine who just bought a place on Lake Champlain. I love Lake Champlain. I love that town, there's so much history and it's beautiful with great fishing. BUT the water's cold.

Yep, I like to be able to swim and not instantly turn into an ice cube and die. But I still love it.

Also one of my favorites, I absolutely love, and when I see it on the schedule I get excited, is the St. Lawrence River because of where we stay. We can go down to Alexandria Bay and I take the kids up to Ottawa. Last year we went on the parliament tour and we stayed for the live show at the big parliament building. It's also a very small town but it has a lot of history. I just love it up there.

One of the days while in the campground a lady was driving through with a truck full of corn. I stopped her and asked, “We are from Alabama. Can we just pull over on the side of the road and just pick corn?” This is how nice the people are up north: She's like, “Here's my address. Come by and I will let you pick corn.” So we stopped by.

She had a dairy farm and shoot, I mean, the kids learned so much from the hands-on tour we had walking around this farm. I’m glad I stopped her and played dumb. Of course you can’t just stop on the side of the road and pick someone else’s corn. So it's adventures, stories and people that make the St. Lawrence one of my favorite stops.

Half Past First Cast: Do you fish?

Julia Kennedy: Yes. When I married Steve I had a toolbox and tackle box and I knew how to use both of them.

Half Past First Cast: So in that case what is your favorite lake to fish?

Julia Kennedy: I like smallmouth fishing because they're mean and they pull. So that takes me back to the St Lawrence River.

I really like Clear Lake but I could not make the swimbait work and it still aggravates me to this day. I could not catch that really huge fish that I wanted to catch. So although I like Clear Lake I can’t say it is one of my favorites ‘cause it broke my heart.

I love to fly fish too.

Half Past First Cast: Oh you do, do you? I think it’s hard.

Julia Kennedy: It's not the easiest but it's usually in wide open spaces such as Colorado or Wyoming and you got the beautiful mountains and scenery. That was our honeymoon. We went to Yellowstone and fly fished. We stayed at the nicer lodge. We stayed in the actual honeymoon suite that overlooked Old Faithful.

Now the last time we were out west we didn’t stay in the “honeymoon suite” and I asked Steve, “Wait, what happened?” He said the first time was to hook you, now you’re snagged.

Julia Steve Kennedy honeymoon Yellowstone bassmaster

Half Past First Cast: What your favorite non fishing vacation?

Julia Kennedy: The beach. I like the beaches around where you live on the Potomac. We love looking for sharks teeth.

We used to go to this place called Saint Joe Peninsula State Park, which I never called it that. I called it our happy place because I didn't want anybody to know about it. Then sadly it got blown away with a hurricane.

I'm really hoping that they go back in and rebuild all the campsites and everything. We continue to get online to see if there are openings so we can just run down there for a couple days. We love it and miss it.

Half Past First Cast: Being away from your “things” at home is surely tough. What's the best thing about your RV?

Julia Kennedy: So you know we started off with a tent. We moved from a tent because we were down in Clewiston and there was a huge storm and we woke up and our tent roof was gone. So after that we went to the Shadow Cruiser which kind of found us. It was in somebody’s front yard near one of Steve’s Grandmother's neighbors and it was the right price, cash. So we had that for a couple of years until it fell apart.

Thank goodness for Clear Lake, a win and a big year. We decided to get a RV.

Steve Kennedy Clear Lake Keith Alan Trip Weldon Elite Series

We went with the bigger 40-foot pusher big deal motor home because we had a double stack trailer that we pulled behind it. I like the togetherness of being in the same car. We like being together. Steve missed so much when Sophia was growing up and we were in two separate vehicles traveling to the same places.

So we were traveling the way we wanted to and it was luxurious. We had a full bath and a queen size bed. Very nice. It was called a Bluebird Wanderlodge. Ironically, Steve worked for them as an engineer co-oping in college. He would go back to his hometown and work on Bluebirds for the bus company. They were the high-end luxury coaches, which in the end Steve thought was kind of fulfilling, knowing he finally owned one. Although the downfall is that it doesn't get but 10 miles to a gallon.

We were driving down the road separately at one point and the Pathfinder caught on fire in Texas. By the way, a little side note: Never put out a gas fire with water.

We needed a vehicle and we bought a Jeep. So we still had to get out west to our destination. I'm driving. I see the fender come off of the double stack and almost take out a lady. We ended up losing both tires and it was horrible.

I said, “That's it! I'm done with this big monstrosity that might kill somebody!” So we went back to the truck camper.

It was also better so we both didn’t miss all the hysterical screaming or the times when Sophia saw the Chick-Fil-A cows on the side of the road. We both needed to be in the same car so we both didn’t miss anything. That's why we went back to truck camper even though it's a lot smaller.

So I don't know how to or if I answered your question. Which one do I like the most? It’s the truck camper even though it's the most cramped we've ever been but because we travel together.

Besides, with less space and room to do things inside the RV, like watch TV all day, we get to explore wide open spaces. It's more fun to sit outside instead of sitting inside like we were at home. That's not for us. Like I previously said, keep it simple. Keep it simple. Keep it simple. That's always been our motto. So the truck camper was the easiest and best.

Half Past First Cast: What's the best souvenir you've taken home from a fishing trip?

Julia Kennedy: A trophy (no hesitation).

When we went to Mount Ida, Arkansas, Lake Ouachita, the town that we were fishing out of has quartz crystals and if you don’t know, I'm a little bit of a rock hound and I got to go dig for rocks. In Herkimer. New York I got Herkimer Diamonds. Sharks teeth from the Potomac River.

Steve Julia Kennedy family bassmaster victory dardanelle

Half Past First Cast: Any good luck charms that you take on the road?

Julia Kennedy: Steve doesn't believe in that. He's the scientific dry engineer type. There's no luck, it’s calculation. But he does have a Tinker Bell on his boat. I don't know where it came from but when Kerry Short wrapped Steve’s boat, years ago, she would subtly sneak a Tinker Bell on the console. We say it's all about faith, trust and pixie dust. Tinker Bell resides on the boat this year as well, just can’t remember where.

Not a lucky charm, but we do have a “thing” we do every blast off. When Steve goes by in the morning and Dave Mercer announces his name, Steve looks up at me and goes, “GRRRRRR,” and I say, “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

Half Past First Cast: Misery loves company. Let’s hear your biggest mishap.

Julia Kennedy: You would have thought it was the double stack tire almost killing that woman but NO. Every year one of the boats, trucks, campers has some issue. One year our boat trailer had the issue. You had to watch out that the bearings wouldn’t start on fire. We were going to the Potomac River tournament, we were in Virginia, and we look back as see the wheel had come off the trailer. The bearings became fire starters and the wheel came off and just rolled down the Interstate.

I pulled over, Steve grabbed the fire extinguisher and starts running down the interstate after the wheel, catches up to it and puts the fire out. He turns around, smiles and is so proud.

And then, WHOOSH. Like out of the movies, the interstate goes up in flames.

The fire trucks came, the police showed up and at this point you couldn’t even see headlights the smoke was so thick. After about an hour of the interstate being shut down they started letting people go, and there I was waving to everyone saying, “I’m so sorry, so sorry!”

So yeah, that’s the one that sticks out as our biggest mishap, setting the interstate on fire.

Half Past First Cast: Do you homeschool your kids? Hopefully you won’t be teaching them driver’s education!

Julia Kennedy: Yes, I do and actually it worked to our advantage with the whole shutdown this year. I don’t know how much longer we can do this without a classroom setting for them to learn. I’m not teaching chemistry, I don’t know chemistry. English ok, chemistry, no.

Half Past First Cast: What would you tell your earlier self? If you knew then what you know now.

Julia Kennedy: Save more money? I look around the house and I see stuff. Where did all this stuff come from? You don’t need stuff. We have each other and our togetherness.