 Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota produced by Lakeland PBS with host Ray Gildow. Production funding for Lakeland Currents is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport for information available at BemidjiAirport.org. Closed captioning for Lakeland Currents is sponsored by Niswa Tech Service, tax preparation for businesses and individuals online at niswatex.com. Hello again everyone and welcome to Lakeland Currents where tonight we're going to be talking about a subject that's near and dear to my heart. For many many years those of us in the outdoors have been trying to figure out ways to get young kids involved in the outdoors. Specifically tonight we're going to be talking about fishing. The DNR came up with a program a number of years ago called Minakwa and it's a good program I'm not saying anything negative about it but we just didn't reach the number of kids that we wanted to reach and there are a lot of reasons for that. There are a lot of single families. Kids are being raised by one parent and they don't have a boat or they're being raised in families that have no history of fishing so they don't have boats. In fact over 50% of Minnesotans who fish do not have a boat. A lot of those people have to fish from banks or from piers and that sort of thing. Well along came a program called Fishing Teams in the high schools. I think it's one of the greatest things that's happened in our high school curriculum since I was a kid and tonight I want to introduce you to a man who has been responsible for starting a lot of these chapters around Minnesota and he has his two sons here who are not only good anglers they're really I guess professional anglers now because they've been in so many tournaments we're going to call you guys professional and one of them says he's much better than the other one but I'm going to stay out of that argument but to my right is Jason Barr who is the Brainerd coach one of the Brainerd coaches at the high school fishing team and Jason did you are you the person that actually started the chapter here yep and tell us a little bit about your background before we get into that fishing team thing okay who are you what do you do okay so I uh I work for an insurance company actually called colonial life I've lived in Brainerd my whole life outside of a couple years my wife owns a drive cleaners downtown Anderson drive cleaners we've owned that now for about four years and I've always been a very avid angler you know fish some charity tournaments and things like that but I always really really enjoyed it and to your right is your son Kyle who is a junior in high school yep and junior and then I'm actually doing post secondary so I'm getting my all my college stuff done too while going to high school good for you and to your right is your younger brother who is not as good a fisherman according to you that would be Tyler so we got Kyle Tyler and Jason and tell us a little bit in the beginning how this got started and I know that Brainerd wasn't necessarily the first chapter in the state no but tell us a give us a little background about these fishing teams um yeah so about five years ago um I had heard that there was a couple fishing teams it was very small uh but there were a couple organizations that had small fishing clubs and I actually reached out to walleye Dan Dan Eigen and said hey uh you know what do you think about this uh you know you want to help me do this he said yeah let's give it a shot so we reached out to flea farm and uh flea farm said we're in we'd love to support something like that so we we contacted the school the athletic director charlie cambell here in Brainerd and just said you know here's what we want to do um would you allow this and he said absolutely um so we put up fires in the school we put it through the announcements we did some things like that and uh set up a meeting at the fourth few middle school we set up a meeting at the high school and we were anticipating around 20 kids we figured we'd get 10 other guys what you know this this was in uh 2013 2013 2013 yep and uh so we went to the high school uh uh first and we had well 50 kids show up we said more than double what you thought yeah yeah oh boy now what now what that we went out of first few we had like 75 kids show up oh my gosh so we went from 20 to 125 uh and uh it was fun you know all it was unbelievable the interest that these kids had they it was new to us it was new to them um we kind of you know brought out a concept here's how we think it works because there was nobody that was really doing something saying here's how you start a high school fishing team do you know how how many teams were at this time in the state roughly I I knew a four four four yeah and and one large team in in lakeville lakeville started about the same time we did and I think they had 40 or 50 kids uh fairly early uh the other clubs were pretty small you know four five six kids and there was a small group of kids already doing it and brainered um nobody really knew about it just a fishing club yeah in fact stolesky uh uh Joe right yeah Joe Joe actually won a national championship right in alabama or in arkansas yeah yeah and and that was kind of the the fishing team at that time but it was never really commercialized if you will it was just kind of those guys got together they had to have a team in order to compete uh they recruited gentlemen named chuck fields to be their coach and away they went um and but they had never really approached a school or anything at that time and that's when we approached school got the green light and because of the size and as many the youth that were involved it was very easy for us to get sponsorships and things like that we grew very rapidly so that first year how did you come up with enough boats and did you do you call the boat uh mentors you call them captains boat captains boat captains how did you get enough boat captains that first year you know we did everything i i spent a lot of time on uh brainered outdoors on the radio uh we were in the newspaper uh social media was huge social media was was our best friend but it was amazing the amount of people that stepped up and said hey that's that's pretty cool so you got enough the first year and we did in fact uh our first tournament we had uh i believe was 43 boats it was up on gall lake and so we had 86 brainered kids on the water at that time for our first turn so in the beginning of doing this did you have like little instructional sessions to show them how to use equipment and that sort of thing you bet you bet and and that's one of the biggest parts about a fishing team is probably only about 40 of our anglers actually fish tournaments uh the the rest of the youth are there to learn how to tie a palm or not and how to rig a texas rig and what rod and what pound test line to use and all those things so we meet pretty regularly just to go through those things so do you do that at the school i do it right at the high school okay and in fact this year uh they started letting us use oh nice pretty soon you'll have fish in it that's our goal yeah yeah so you have instructors that help volunteer to do that sort of thing too so it's not always the same one or two people absolutely yeah they're bringing the regal dolls and and uh and let them speak and then and then on a typical year if they're not interested in being in tournaments because i think you you and i've talked about this there's tournaments almost every weekend if you want to do that but you said that people who don't or kids that didn't want to be in tournaments how often would they meet once a week or once a couple times a month or how often once a month um we also do a youth league every other monday and we put uh 44 kids on the water every other monday and 22 boat captains and that's really uh a laid back boat captains get to fish so they get to show and tell uh that's where we do a lot of our teaching and instruction and things like that is during that fishing league uh outside that we meet once a month um you know we encourage them you think about when you started fishing if you wanted to put on a carolina rig i mean you had to rent a video or something i didn't have videos when i was fishing i wouldn't we didn't have tv but i know what you're saying we'll get a book or uh now they pull it their forward they punch it in everything on youtube everything everything everything a great thing so so these these young guys and gals are leaps and bounds ahead of where a lot of average person at that age i mean how many of your kids would you say are girls um what do we have i think we had 22 gals last year great yeah yeah so a good portion and some of them are very very good anglers in fact uh we just had a little not tying contest here a couple months back and uh i had two gals in front of me and i couldn't believe it they figured it out like that wow wow now you have also been responsible yourself for starting a lot of other tell us about that yeah so um as brainerd grew um we got a lot of media and and so a lot of teams a lot of kids and parents and coaches from all over the state going hey we want to do that but again there was no there was nothing that said here's how you do it um no master plan there was not a master plan uh so i had several uh well over 50 teams reach out to us and say hey how do we do this um so natalie is our our main administrator she put together some packets of you know kind of the stuff on how to start a fishing team and and where to go and we started sending these out and and next thing you know it it really but you personally have been involved in starting like 50 some yeah chapters over over 50 teams that that's amazing yeah that's a lot of volunteer time from yourself yeah well and i think it's just a tip of the iceberg it's gonna continue to grow and not just here in minnesota it is growing everywhere how many of those kids that are involved in the program do you think really don't have access to a boat if it weren't for this um a big percentage of probably it's well over 50 yeah um the cool thing about high school fishing is we get to put two kids in a boat so when we have somebody join the team on our questionnaire or application uh when they join the team one of our questions is does your family own a boat and if the answer is yes it gives us an idea of how many built-in boats we have built in boat captains and of course we get to pair up an angler with that person so that's where most of our boat captains come from is within the team uh that being said we have a list of of many volunteers who donate their time and and energy to get these kids out in the water so it's kind of a combination but there's a lot of kids who join our team who may not even had a fishing pole i mean uh we we literally teach them how to cast or how to tie a knot or all the basics all the very very basics and the progressions of these kids how good they're getting is really fun to watch now you and i've talked about this before but there are national organizations and more than one that a fishing team can belong to like B.A.S.S. Bass and there's another what's the other group on T.B.F. and what does that stand for that's the Bass Federation the Bass Federation they are the primary two large groups are they not and and the and you've all you've belonged to both of them over time we do yeah we've we've worked with both um the FLW is another organization and they kind of partner with the T.B.F. so they do a lot of joint work um but yeah i mean we we went down and fished tournament this year down on Pickle Lake for the T.B.F. FLW and the first two spots i think first place was 56,000 in scholarships wow second place was 50,000 wow so i very encourage kids to use scholarships to go on to college absolutely yeah that's cool it's not cash layouts for kids not cash it's incentives to keep your education going exactly cool it is it's very neat uh what are what's the advantage for if somebody's going to start a fishing club in Hinkley what would the advantage be of looking at those two groups do there are there benefits to belonging to them insurance is the main reason insurance yeah so so both organizations charge $25 and included in that $25 they get an insurance policy so that when they go on a third party boat captain the boat captain can feel at ease the school can feel at ease because those kids have insurance are covered um very important sure um that being said what we've done in Minnesota is actually we started an organization called the student angler tournament trail and in Minnesota last year we had our championship down on Lake Minnetonka and we gave away $24,000 in scholarship money wow right here that's impressive right here at the state yeah wow and uh we'll continue to grow that so Tyler Tyler or Kyle either one of you it's hard to get edge or didn't edge wide between the two of us or I know but talk a little bit about your tournament experience and how you guys got involved and we can both talk or you can take turns doesn't matter to me well you know we really um we hadn't tournament fished much um before the fishing team um we did we went out you know we grew up wildlife fishing I mean we did it for fun but I mean our first very first tournament was the um Minnesota State Championship and that was an eye opener on um what what it really really takes to be a good angler and I mean you're you're sitting it probably the most exciting part for me is just sitting at the launch just waiting you know you hear the national anthem they go over the prayer and then just the the anxiety of just getting ready to take off is probably one of my favorite parts they'll sit in there and I mean just the the different stuff you got to do throughout the tournaments now like oh let's just go try this spot and see if it works like you got to have spot a b c d and e all the way down to z if if none of them work out so I gotta keep moving yep and it's just it's an eye opener on how um like how talented some people really are I mean you you think oh they're they're good and then you go and fish against them and they're like they're one of the best out there and you didn't realize it and so I mean it just opens your eyes on so many different aspects of it now do you two fish as a team yep and how many tournaments have you been in together well I think we would we do 12 12 this year and then probably 10 or 11 last year too so I mean it's almost so you've been in 20 some tournaments already and you're a junior in software in high school yeah and that's not that's not including you know all the local you know our um fishing leagues and then just um some different adult tournaments that we fish together too that's just strictly high school fishing in the last couple years are these strictly bass tournaments you're talking about are they multi species um they're mostly um um bass fishing tournaments but then we did do one up on Lake Bemidji on late September and that was the first ever multi species tournament you were allowed two walleyes five pan fish and two bass and that was the um the the tbf inaugural multi-species tournament in the in the whole nation the national championship and Tyler have you guys placed how have you done in these tournaments um the one he's just talking about that multi-species one we actually won that one then down on pickwick this year we took and that's in what state on minnesota pickwicks in alabama alabama yep and uh from that one we took 18th out of 384 wow that's a lot of teams in that tournament yeah it took a while to get everybody out didn't it yeah 10 flights and you took 18th yep out of 300 and some teams yeah that's i know for people who know about fishing they know about the lenders they started the infusion and magazine and angling the edge and l lender has kind of deemed you two guys as rising stars in the business hasn't he yeah you know he um he's been very supportive of us and it really helps that um you know we live a couple of miles away from his office so you know usually stop in and just say hey how are you doing how's the how's the how's it going and all that fun stuff and so i mean we've really gotten um to be real close to the whole lender family and um they really they really like the aspect of high school fishing and they think that um it's going to be the thing that drives the fishing industry later on uh jason you have any idea how many kids are involved statewide um i've heard up to 3000 um you know there's there's three different organizations so it's hard to you know really put a number on unique anglers what i do know is that it's doubled every year wow it keeps on doubling it'll double and it's going to happen again it's going to happen again it's going to happen again and it's really starting to have an impact on license sales um nationally you know some of the the national organizations are saying that the the license sales between anglers of the ages of 16 and 22 years old are way up way way up that's a totally reverse of the trend that was going on exactly it did it did reverse a trend uh it was interesting too is is we just got some numbers as far as there's a lot of years where you know technology is cool it was new it was you know wow look at these gaming systems and things like that and that trend is reversing where young people are now thinking it's cool to get outside and and do some of the outdoor activities and things like that so there's no doubt that it'll continue to grow and that's similar to what we saw with trap shooting club in Minnesota they've grown exponentially exactly really fast well so we don't run out of time we need to talk a little bit about your business because uh kyle and tyler have started a little business on the side and tell us what it is and i know you got a sample or two maybe we'll get laid on the table and you could show us what you've got yes so what um what we do is we do um a lot of bass um bass plastics but then we also do some walleye and uh crappie stuff so we're really um multi-species and um you know we tried to get into the market you know my dad i turned 16 i started driving and stuff and my dad's like you're gonna get a job you know and you're gonna pay for gas and stuff and so um you know tyler and i came up the idea well let's start this um this business here and we'll see tyler could you hold just a couple of us up so the camera could take a look at them you know keep talking and we you know we thought you know we only know we don't know of anybody that does bulk plastics and so that's one of the key things that we tuned in on was the bulk plastic so i mean you go out you buy 10 uh eight package sankos and it's usually four or five dollars we're charging a hundred sankos for 22 dollars wow so i mean we're really you're very competitive price wise we're very competitive and it's high it's high quality too i mean it'll last you a very long time and where do you have these manufactured um you know we outsource everything so it's made it's made in georgia and then we um package and do everything else in our basement basically just the two of you you know we usually um we hire a few bodies you know we get some chips and dips and stuff and we have a good time packaging baits and tell fishing stories and stuff like that you know years ago there was two guys that used to go in their basement and make lindy rigs and jigs and their name was ron and l linder and uh my friend dutch craig and who has craig and's resort used to you know he still has the resort next to where ron linder lives and he said i can remember seeing lights over there after dark there never used to be anybody on that part of the lake here are the linders down in their basement you know just the way you guys are doing it now yeah so that's pretty cool yeah and you know al was um a big player too he started he um ran the fishing careers workshop and then we attended that and you know we kept in the back of our mind you know you know we can do something in the fishing industry we just got to figure out what we want to do and so he he um brought up that we got to get a job and that inspiration from that careers workshop really pushed us to do it it's it's pretty tough for most people to make a living in the fishing industry without a supplemental income i guess that's the bottom line there aren't many people like the linders that can do it full time so i think you guys aren't a good track and how's it going how are the sales it's it's going very good um you know we're trying to you know with winter rolling in we're trying to get to some states down in the south um we've got a couple people that are very interested so we're hoping that'll sales will keep up throughout the winter and stuff so when you guys are fishing tournaments and you go to a lake like pickwick or some of those lakes they don't let you usually pre-fish them do they they usually throw you on cold or do they let you pre-fish um so they um you know like pickwick they cut it off a month before that you could fish it and then three days you had three official practice days that you could go down you know find some fish you know make sure um what you're doing and stuff so you're not going and you know completely blind they want to they give you some time to do it but they don't give you um as as um as much time as some people would like you know it's two or three days as tournament anglers how do you find the fishing in minnesota for bass compared to where you fished other places oh it's it's a completely different game you know we're fishing lily pads you know deep lead edges and stuff and you go down there you're idling miles and miles trying to find one school of fish off a legend 30 feet of water how's the fishing you know the fishing can be pretty tough it can it can be tough but it can be really good um during the national tournament we went down and our first day of the tournament we'd probably gotten 120 fish wow and then um the next day it was same thing you know 100 fish days and you know but we go to some systems like the ohio river and we you struggled to get one bass i mean it's the the variation in fishing um is crazy you know up here we got clear lakes you go down there you stick your hand in a photo water and you can't see it oh but it sounds like the fishing league business has changed all of your lives hasn't it oh there's no doubt to the good oh yeah absolutely um you know these guys have have been really fortunate we've been fortunate in fact that first tournament uh he talked about a molex lake the state championship um he won at at 13 years old so he won his first tournament that's pretty good deal huh and uh from from there uh we went to lake carlyle in illinois and so uh that started a trend every year now i don't uh i no longer take a vacation because i know we'll be traveling uh you know we were down in that vacation that's a vacation you know we've been to illinois and ohio uh he fished a national tournament for bass in tennessee um alabama you know we've been to several states now uh traveling around uh doing this fishing what a great experience it's it's really fun and the cool thing is now is that college fishing is also catching fire so i know that when i can no longer pester these guys in the boat they have an opportunity to go out to fish for a university of minnesota or yes kansas or wherever in scholarships available now there's a lot of colleges now that will actually pay an angler to come to your school and uh fish for their school that's great so jason tell us if there's someone out there that doesn't have a fishing program in their community and they're interested what should they do go to student angler dot com and uh we have a ton of information on there uh my contact information is there i work with a gentleman named jimmy bell uh natalie peterson who's our local admin she also is our admin for the trail uh jeffrey young here in brainard is our tournament director he's also one of our assistant coaches he understands it very well steve crone and runs our youth league there's a ton of resources out there there's a ton of guys out there now who can uh help get a team put together where to go the resources available now our night night and what we when we started yeah and it's good work on your part uh you have done a lot and i know you're not looking for credit from this but you've done a lot to help a lot of groups going i know when i was working at a sport show last spring i ran across a guy who worked with you his team was only seven nobody was really excited about it so for all of you guys that's really really good work we're kind of running out of time but thanks for jumping on with us and i'm going to be following you guys in your tournaments this year to see uh what's the next level is going to be for you perfect so thanks a lot guys appreciate it very much thanks for jumping on the show with us thank you thank you you've been watching lakeland currents where we're talking about what you're talking about i'm ray gildow so long until next time