You're ready, all right.
Well, give me your background.
How did you get into this?
When did you decide?
You know what I should open up is a
big tackle store.
Well, it started
25, 30 years ago.
I started taking some of
my lead jigs
to work with me
and showing some of friends
at work, oh yeah, can I buy some
of these? Can I buy of those?
And I said, sure.
And then, well, it
just kept on building after
a while.
And then I got my son involved.
I bought him a...
Fly tying vise,
and he started tying flies,
and then my friends wanted
flies, so okay,
we started, and after
a while we did
have a little
shop up in Michigan
for a year,
and it got too hard
to be traveling back and forth and
everything, so.
We kind of stepped back for
a little while and looked at
property down here and
we decided on a good
location like this.
I mean it's near the
lake and it's convenient and
not very far from the house.
Yeah, so did you, you must have
grown up fishing, or is fishing a
part of your life all along?
Well, yes,
being from the UP,
I guess we had more time to go
fishing and a lot more fun up
there because there's a
lot of lakes close by.
And you walk to some of the lakes
down here, you know, some lakes
are 20 miles apart.
But yeah, I did quite a bit
of fishing up north.
So when did you start creating your
own baits then?
30-Some years ago,
it just snowballed, I guess
you might say.
Was that something for fun, or just
to say something?
Making baits for myself
and then you know I said
I started taking a
few to work with me and my friends
seemed interesting and
oh can you make these here and can
you make something a little bit
different and yeah make
some flies and make
spinners and it
just kind of snowballed
and a hobby turns into a
business.
What's great about this is you've
got family with you, right?
Yes.
Why is that so important to
doing this?
As a family business,
I think you have more
personal touch even
to the customers that come in
instead of being a
higher corporate
shop
as such. It has
like a more personal a
touch and get
them involved and if they like it
they'll stick around.
If they don't like it, they won't
stick around there.
It's been working okay for us, so.
And you probably see the same
families come back as your
customers, right?
You probably remember little kids.
A story.
We have a customer,
when he was a teenager,
he would ride his bike with a little
cart on the back and
he'd come in
practically every day or every other
day.
And now we've been here now over 23
years so this is,
he started coming in when we first
started and now he's
like 35 years old and he still comes
in every other with
his wife and his kid.
So it's kind of unique that
way.
Talk to me about, what is it about
walleye that gets people hooked
on fishing?
Oh wow.
Fishing for walleye is
a little bit different than fishing
for panfish.
Walleye generally you have to
go out into the water.
Sure you can fish from shore but
out in the water it's
probably more enjoyable for the
kids and they're not
quite so restricted as how
close you are to somebody else like
if you fish from the shore they
may be fishing elbow to elbow.
And it's just,
well, I'd probably put up a
better fight than some other
panfish.
Although, you know,
the kids do like fishing for panfish
also.
And when a kid catches a
walleye and they pull this huge fish
out, what does it do to them?
I did just
It's a...
Remembrance that they caught a
nice size fish sometimes
if they go into the park
and catch a five or
six or seven inch little pan fish
they don't remember that as
much as they would be catching a
20 inch walleye because they're so
nice and fat and they
can use it for
for a meal.
Some pan fish, they can't really use
for a a meal and it's just
a good
remembrance I guess you might say.
And that's why it's,
and for
throughout the whole state
walleye could almost
be the state fish
and it's just
uh it just walleye,
everybody knows what walleye you
know walleye well for fish
right I gotta have a walleye
plate I don't want a
Mm.
Just walleye stuff, the one,
right?
It's number one or number two on
the list.
So, um, if you
would, can you show us a
little bit of how you make some of
the lures? Is that possible?
Do you have your your setup open to
either to put together a rig or
something for us just so we can see
a little video?
Okay, I'm going to turn that
over to my partner.
Okay.
I'll introduce her.
We got it.
Well, you gotta talk over here.
We have a microphone over here
I don't know which one you'd like.
Any kind of wall light setup would
be great.
You can just show what you have.