(upbeat adventurous music) - We're in Alexandria, on one of the area's 300 lakes.

Today we're gonna target crappies with National Walleye Tour pro Drake Herd from Fin Gear, a local company that's making big waves in the fishing industry.

It is late March, so the walleye season is closed, but that doesn't mean you can't go ice fishing.

Now, the ice may look a little sketchy, and it was a little bit by the shoreline, but there's a lot of ice out here in the middle of the lake, and Drake actually fished here just a day or two ago, so we knew we were coming out on some safe ice.

But, there's a couple of things you wanna make sure of if you're gonna come out here this late.

I got my picks with, you could bring cleats with, since there's no snow on the ice, make it a little bit safer walking around.

And of course, bring a spud bar with you if you're going out there for the first time on your own, make sure that you do have enough ice to support your weight out there.

But other than that, it's usually pretty warm, the sun is warm, the weather's nice, and we have the lake to ourselves.

Let's catch some fish.

(upbeat rock music) Are you from Alexandria?

- Yeah, born and raised.

I was very fortunate, my parents kind of grew up on the west side of Carlos, on the Chain, so me and my brother got spoiled that way.

We got a little 14-foot with a 9.9 that we got to cruise around basically and learn how to fish.

Oh this is a sunny.

I wonder if these repent, we gotta maybe keep moving.

(upbeat rock music continues) - That one's gonna cost you While we've been covered up in fish here, you know, there is generally a good rule when you're chasing crappies or panfish around, sometimes you'd have to chase them around, so that's what Drake's doing, he's popped a bunch of holes, and he's found a school, moved over here the first few seconds after dropping down, he ended up hooking up with a fish.

I'm a little bit more stubborn, I don't like to move around just quite as much as that.

But after he did move over there, the entire school that I was sitting on has moved off just a little bit, so I'm probably gonna have to get up and drill another hole.

Did you catch another one?

(chuckles) (Drake chuckles) (bright upbeat ambient music) There we go.

- Got 'em.

Imagine, you have a pull.

- I just needed to come to fish outta your hole, apparently.

That's be a nice crappie.

- Nice crappie.

- Yep, oh yeah.

It's a beaute Clark.

- That's not bad at all.

We're just kind of bouncing around and finding nice crappies.

We're keeping some of these, I'll I probably put that one in a frying pan.

So that's what makes it real important to bring a LiveScope pole with you, (Drake chuckles) which I conveniently forgot to bring mine today when I got all packed up here this morning.

So you got your pole with, and that's helped you actually scan around, follow this school, which crappies, a lot of times people are popping holes chasing fish like that.

So that's really kind of given you the advantage, 'cause I can't really do that.

Tell me about your pole.

- Yeah, I mean we just, we call it our XL pole, it extends anywhere up to, you know, 60 inches if we get that thick of ice.

- Oh wow.

- But yeah, I mean it's all HDP parts and aluminum, and we can go to town, you can beat it up and throw it in a sled and go to your next spot, or carry it on the ice, whatever you gotta do.

So, it's been a good accessory for us, and seems to be working today.

- Fishing outta your hole here, it's allowed me to also see the shuttle that you got going on here.

Tell me about this shuttle.

- We went all aluminum, just wanted something a little more heavy duty that you could beat up.

I mean, again, you're traveling across a lake in middle of winter, it's cold temperatures, you know, stuff can break, so we wanted something that you could just beat up and if it fell down it would be perfectly fine, so, that's where we ended up going.

And obviously it's kind of evolved to where you have master switches now, USB ports, lights, you know, everything's on these shuttles, so you're just trying to stay with the game and kind of go from there.

Obviously we came out with the shuttle bag, which has been a big hit for customers.

So they like their protection and they can shove a 12-inch screen, hide it in there when they're traveling if they want, and go from there.

- How long ago did you start making, like this product right here?

- Ooh, that was probably four or five years ago, I'd say, is when we really got into the shuttle game.

The Fin Gear brand is, I think we're on year eight or nine.

So, you know, it kind of started as we wanted rod holders, and then we went to tracks and graft mounts and everything for boats.

Well, then LiveScope came out, and that changed everything.

Guys needed poles for winter, they wanted a portable version for winter stuff, and so we kind of went from there, and this is what we kind of came up with, and evolved from there.

Just hold it.

- Tapped it.

- You missed it.

- Yeah.

- He missed it.

- Oh my gosh.

All right, so.

- You can stay in there.

- (chuckles) Okay.

There we go.

All right, now the pressure's really on, 'cause he got cocky.

- Yep.

Oh, that's a big bluegill.

- Yep.

Well, I figured that's why I was missing a lot of these fish, just small pan fish.

But, pretty neat.

You got one too?

Hey.

(Drake chuckles) All right.

Doubling up, same hole.

- Same hole.

Oops.

Sorry, bud.

Ooh, look at at that one.

- Look at the size of that.

That's a big one.

- You wanna trade?

- Yeah, sure.

(both chuckle) - Nice.

- There you go, I'm gonna put mine back.

But that's a nice crappie right there.

- Yeah.

I could tell, when you drop down, I saw one kind of screaming in from the side there, so.

- Sure, I mean that's kind of the beauty of having these types of electronics, to be able to pick through the fish a little bit.

But why don't we put that one back and then go see the shop?

- That sounds good.

(intense ambient music) - All right, Drake, obviously we did some fishing today, you're known in the fishing world, but you're nine to five, if you want to call it that, Your business obviously encompasses a lot of fishing stuff, but it's bigger than that.

- It kind of started out, it was a crazy thing, I started doing fishing lures.

First I was just tying hair jigs for a company.

Then they needed me to do some lead work, so we got the lead equipment.

And then they needed some soft plastic stuff, so we started doing plastic injection.

And it just kind of grew into what it is today, which, I never thought it would've got there.

- So you started with hair jigs?

- Yes, literally with hair jigs.

- And this is where you are now.

- Yeah.

And you could see, my parents will kinda laugh about it, I started in their basement, like literally just started making these, and then I bought my own house, I did it in my garage, and then I bought this shop, you know, to where it is today, I've got nine employees now, and it's kind of crazy.

Started with the fishing lures, then, obviously we started up Fin Gear, which is tracks, rod holders, graft mounts, any kind of accessory really that you need for your boat to help you while you're out fishing.

You know, that was one of the things that myself, Robert Cardenas and Paul Ruda kind of started, we wanted something else that we thought we could offer for customers.

We ended up purchasing Rig-Rite, and he makes cargo nets.

Any of the nets, storage nets that you see on the side of boats, he was producing.

He had grommets to hide wires off of graph mounts, he had transducer plates.

So, it kind of fit well, because it was everything that Fin Gear wasn't doing, he was kind of doing, so it worked out really well.

(idle curious music) This is where it kind of all happened, it started out literally as a rod holder.

Robert kind of had the idea as he was riding down to his river on his bike, and he always wanted a rod holder for his bike.

- That's awesome.

- And then it developed into, we need rod holders for boats, then we went to graph mounts, and then, you know, LiveScope obviously has changed a lot of how we fish in today's world, and so we ended up designing a pole, and that's just evolving into so many other things, you know?

At first we were starting with two-by-fours and wood and all this stuff to try to get to where we are today, and this is where we've come out, with a pretty solid mount.

I mean, this thing basically can slide into a track, or you can mount it permanently to your boat, but you can rotate it anywhere you want, and then all you have to simply do while you're fishing.

And then when you wanna move spots, you just simply pull that pin, pull it out of the water, twist it, and you're running down the lake.

(tranquil music) - I didn't realize how big of a part of your business was making lures for people.

- Yeah, that's a whole nother avenue.

You know, it's one of those things that I started tying hair jigs, and now you'll see as we come in here, we're working on a lot of lead products.

Just really done that, soft plastic injection, some pouring of baits, a lot of tying of baits.

You know, it's one of those animals that you don't realize in a store how much goes into it until you start making it.

(upbeat music) These guys are actually working on some lead inserts that go inside of baits.

So you'll just see a lot of the hook hangers and stuff that come outta lures, well, a lot of those have lead or certain inserts on 'em to weigh the bait right.

You know, you don't want it to be rolling, or too head-heavy or too tail heavy.

So these guys are making those inserts, we can go take a look.

I have a great crew here right now, and I love every day of it, you know?

I have all the faith in the world in them and what we're doing here, and I think they do the same with me, you know?

So pretty happy, obviously, but honestly, hope we expand a little more.

You know, I'm sure we'll find another avenue, this right now is awesome, it's more than I could ever dream of, but we'll just keep expanding.

I'm sure the fishing industry, it's a constantly evolving machine, as you know, and so I'm sure something new and great will come out, and we'll kind of just go with the flow of things, you know?

It's been an awesome journey so far, and we'll kind of always keep inventing something else and kind of keep rolling.

(tranquil music)