Bait shop numbers are declining, but histories and stories

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Bait shop numbers are declining, but histories and stories remain

Written by Glen Schmitt, St Cloud Times outdoors writer
Jan. 18, 2014
Photos: http://www.sctimes.com/article/20140119 ... ck_check=1

The number of bait and tackle shops throughout Minnesota continues to decline.

Big box stores, the economy, and industrial growth are a few contributing factors that have diminished those traditional ma and pa stores that were once found in just about every small town in the state.

There are about 830 licensed minnow retailers statewide, which is a drop in the bucket compared to 30 years ago, and many of them no longer have that traditional bait-shop feel. In order to survive, the modern bait shop also needs to offer gas, lottery tickets and groceries — it’s as if bait and tackle have become secondary.

Even more limited is the number of bait shops that have stood the test of time. Those small businesses that have been passed down from one generation to the next, with buildings that were remodeled and added onto and yet continue to cater to anglers, are truly rare.

Those that remain are iconic, even legendary, in the big picture of Minnesota fishing. If the walls of these institutions could talk, they’d tell us a great deal about the history of fishing in this state.

This is the story of some of them, told by the people that have lived through decades of changes in the bait and tackle industry.

Christopherson's Bait and Tackle, Alexandria
At 75 years of age, Al Christopherson still shows up daily at the bait and tackle shop his father, Will, started in 1934. Although his visits are usually short and more to shoot the breeze than work, there’s no denying he still loves being around the bait shop atmosphere.

Christopherson took over the family business full-time in 1972, but he literally grew up in this bait shop that has moved locations just once since it opened during the Great Depression. He’s been in the bait and tackle business his whole life and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

“You know, I’ve got to know a lot of really good people doing this over the years,” Christopherson said. “I still come down every day because I still enjoy it — I miss not being here more.”

The original Christopherson’s Bait was located on Main Street in Alexandria, but today sits on a piece of property on the edge of town that Will Christopherson purchased in 1945.

Will and his brother built the concrete building that would be the new Christopherson’s Bait in 1948 and added onto it in 1961 and again in 1969. The current building was built in 1999, around that original concrete structure.

“They put a lot of work into that initial building, including pouring the concrete minnow tanks,” Christopherson said. “Those tanks were poured in 1948 and we still use them today in the back of the store.”

During the first few years of operation, the business revolved solely around live bait. Traps were built and rivers were seined to catch wild minnows that would be sold to fishermen.

It wasn’t until 1952 that Christopherson’s started to offer tackle. They sold some of the first terminal tackle imported from Japan and they were one of the initial shops in Minnesota to buy leaders from Berkley, now a giant tackle manufacturer, which at the time worked out of a garage.

“A lot has changed over the years; I can remember when few people had a boat that was towed behind a vehicle and they’d carry an outboard motor in their trunk,” Christopherson said. “For depth finders, we’d tie six-pound weights to rope and mark it with five-foot increments and drop it to the bottom to find out how deep we were fishing.”

In 1994, Christopherson was hurt badly in a car accident that he says no longer allowed him to function the way he liked. So he turned the business over to his daughter and son-in-law, Denise and Dana Freese, who continue to run the family business.

“We’ve got three generations here, a lot of history, and I don’t see it as a dying industry,” he said. “I hope and I think that my grandchildren will continue what my dad started 70 years ago.”

White's Corner Bait, Madison Lake
Located east of Mankato on Highway 60 is the town of Madison Lake. In it sits a hard-to-miss red structure that was built in 1900, which today is White’s Corner Bait.

Originally built as a residential home, the Winkler family converted it to a bait shop in 1950. Elgin Kaderlick bought the business in 1978 and re-named it Kaderlick’s Bait, which became well known as the spot to go for anglers in this region.

Ryan White grew up in the Madison Lake area, fishing its rivers and lakes and often stopping by the old Kaderlick’s Bait Shop for minnows. He says there were three different owners since Elgin bought the store and he had such an appreciation for it, he became the fourth in 2011.

“It’s always been just a bait and tackle store, there’s so much history to this building,” White said. “I always enjoyed walking in this place and I wanted to own a business, and this was it.”

Not much has changed with the exterior or interior of the building since the 1950s. Anglers have more tackle options and a bigger selection of live bait, but the building has remained the same.
White says the best part of owning this bait shop is seeing familiar faces every day. People in this area appreciate its historic value, which is why he has no plans of making any changes to it.

“I had thoughts of remodeling it when I bought it, but it would be really hard to tear down,” he said. “It’s known as the old red building on Highway 60.”

Buck's Hardware, Grand Marais
In 1946, Sherman and Harold Benson bought the Midway Service store in Grand Marais. It was a gas and service station built in 1929 that the two brothers would run and eventually add sporting goods to.

Sherman’s son, Buck, worked the sporting goods portion of the business as a youngster, but eventually moved to the Twin Cities. He returned to Grand Marais in 1977 and started running the operation full-time.

“Back in the 1950s and 1960s, fishing was such a huge part of the culture up here, we stayed open 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Buck Benson said. “At that time, tackle and bait could be the primary focus of the business, but that’s changed over the years.”

Benson added it was difficult to find fishing tackle in the southern part of the state during the 1950s and 1960s. Spoons, which were extremely popular around Grand Marais, weren’t being sold in the Twin Cities because nobody bought them.

Live bait was difficult to find in that era as well, especially if you traveled into Canada, which is where a lot of his customers went. Leeches wouldn’t arrive on the fishing scene until later, so it was basically minnows and nightcrawlers being sold.

“We started selling a lot of wooden lures. And once Rapala’s came out, everyone had to have them,” Benson said. “People trolled a lot when they fished in the 1960s and most of them used Rapalas.”

A fire burned down the original Midway building in 1987, but Benson rebuilt the following year. It was a bigger building and, with changes to the fishing industry, he saw a need to expand the business beyond the outdoors.

In 1998, Buck’s Hardware opened on the same site with more fishing and hunting equipment, live bait, and plenty of nuts, bolts, tools and related items. There’s still a major focus on bait and tackle at Buck’s and it remains a popular destination in this region.

“It’s tough to make a living now just selling bait and tackle, and that’s why we put in the hardware store,” Benson said. “That’s been the biggest change I’ve seen; guys would buy everything when they got here, but now they can buy it at home before they come.”

Ebner's Live Bait, Elk River
The Ebner’s Live Bait building has been a fixture along Highway 10 in Elk River since 1949. Alfred Ebner built it, his son Ronald took the business over in 1968, and Ronald’s daughter, Joanne Rousseau, has run the three generation bait-and-tackle store since 1992 .

Rousseau worked alongside her dad as a youngster and recalls the hordes of anglers that visited the store after work each day, often heading further north to Mille Lacs Lake once they had bait. Some came late and were never turned away by her father.

“We’d lock the front door, but we had a bell outside that people would ring if they wanted bait, and dad would get up in the middle of the night for them,” she said. “Basically, we were open 24 hours, seven days a week — if they wanted bait, they knew we’d be open.”

Rousseau knows the fishing culture has changed with people now buying products off the Internet and in bigger stores. She said artificial bait is more popular than ever, which is tough if you’re in the live bait business, and that people are busier than they once were and many don’t fish as often as they use to.

As a result, she’s not sure how long she’ll be able to hang in there. Although she owns the business, her dad, now 84 years old, owns the land. And with increasing development around them, there’s a chance it could be sold in the future. But she seems OK with the fact that a fourth generation won’t have the opportunity to take over the business.

“People’s lives are different with kids now into year-round sports, or guys that fished every other day are now playing golf, and those things are important,” she said. “I’ve made some incredible friendships, seen a lot of people come and go, and met a lot of really good people.”

Fletcher's Bait, Sauk Centre
Denny Fletcher was born in 1950, the same year his dad, Al, put up the building that today remains Fletcher’s Bait in Sauk Centre. Other than a couple of years spent in the Army during the 1970s, Denny Fletcher has been around the minnow business, both wholesale and retail, his entire life.

Fletcher recalls the late 1960s when leeches became a big part of the Minnesota fishing scene. He credits Al and Ron Christopherson of Alexandria with figuring out that leeches caught fish.

“They were really the first guys that started using leeches, so dad and I started baiting tin cans with just about anything and trap them,” he said. “We’d get a lot of leeches and sell them for $2 a gallon; once they started using them on Mille Lacs, the leech thing really exploded.”

Fletcher also remembers the days when golden shiners of the wild variety were tough to find, a trend that continues today. He says just about everyone that carried golden shiners had them imported from Arkansas.

He saw a demand for the popular minnow, and in 1978 he told his dad he was going to start raising golden shiners, which was very difficult to do. Up to that point, pond-raising shiners was on very few bait dealers’ radars.

“My dad said it couldn’t be done and that it was a waste of time,” Fletcher said. “Fourteen years later I had my first batch. It took that long to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.”

It’s that niche, the ability to raise golden shiners, that fuels the wholesale side of his business today. On the retail side, he remembers how white grubs, often plucked from manure piles, were main baits for panfishermen. Wax worms and leeches eventually replaced those grubs.

After 60-plus years in the bait-and-tackle business, Fletcher’s seen many changes — some good and some bad.

He hopes it’s an industry that continues to thrive and that his son, Shawn, who has been part of the business for 20 years, has the opportunity to run it.

“There was a time when every town had a ma and pa bait shop, but most of them are gone now,” Fletcher said. “That’s probably the biggest change I’ve noticed over the years — there’s just fewer of us left.”