I found him one summer when our sub-division flooded. The adults weren't happy about the water table being so high that septic tanks backed up and having to drive their cars through two feet of water, but all of us kids had a BLAST playing in the flooded streets and yards.
I honestly don't even remember how I caught Charlie. He was a young catfish, maybe four to five inches long. But catch him I did and I took him home like I did with every animal I found, and asked my mom if we could keep him.
She said yes.
So we prepped him to live in our aquarium as if he were a store-bought fish. And he lived with us a year or so before he grew too big for the tank (which was a pretty big tank).
I'd tap on the side of the tank and Charlie would swim over to me. I loved that fish. And I cried when it was time to release him back to the wild.
The whole family loaded up into the car and we drove up to Black Water State Park where I released Charlie into the Black Water River where he'd have plenty of room to keep growing.
As with the pet skunk I had in college, I'll have to dig through my old photo albums for pictures of all of these critters. I grew up in a much different, much less regulated time. And I'm happier for it.