 Many Minnesotans have stories of time spent in fish houses from their childhood to present day. One family with happy memories brought its business into Brainerd for an annual fish house expo over the weekend, featuring the advances fish houses have made in recent years. Clayton Castle has that story. Fish houses are becoming hot commodities this time of year as the lakes freeze and the ice fishing begins. Many people in Brainerd had the opportunity to see the latest and greatest models of fish houses at the Nilsons Hardware Ice Castle Fish House Expo at the Brainerd Armory over the weekend. We've come up with a few of our own models. We have several here at the show that are unique to Nilsons Hardware RV that you won't find in any other dealer and this is our latest version right here 24-foot Grand Outdoors. Now the feature of Fish House here at the expo is the Grand Outdoors. It's a Nilsons Hardware exclusive features up-to-date amenities and even cool LED lights. It really got just about everything you need. It's almost more like a home than it is a fish house or a camper. For Robert Bryce the fish house business has become a family affair as well. Me and my dad purchased Nilsons Hardware September 1st of last year which they've been selling ice castles ever since 2005. So just getting to learn all the new models and creating our own models is something that we've been working on doing and have a lot of fun with it. Robert has always wanted to be in the fish house business since building his own fish house as a kid. Remember in seventh grade I built myself a six by eight fish house you know and all my buddies thought it was the greatest thing in the world and I had one of the nicest houses out on the lake you know and to think back to that was roughly 30 years ago and to where we've come now is just amazing. Robert says he brought the expo to Brainerd because of the abundant amount of expos in the Twin Cities and the abundant amount of interest in the lakes country area. A lot of people in rural Minnesota they don't want to go down in the cities and Brainerd is kind of centrally located and of course it's a great area up here for fishing and there's a lot of a lot of fishermen up here a lot of lakes. This was the sixth year for the expo reporting in Brainerd Clayton Castle Lakeland news. Nilsons Hardware is located in Swanville which is just outside of Little Falls. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland news please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.