Greg Fisher has always loved to fish, and he made it his living when he bought the venerable Vados Bait & Tackle Shop in Spring Lake Park. Each fishing opener, thousands of Minnesotans take to the lakes, some of them using bait bought from a dwindling number of small family bait shops. These are his words:

I'd fish with my dad and grandfather, who was a farmer in Wisconsin, but he loved to fish. It was not so much catch-and-release. It was catching a bunch of fish so we could eat. When we'd get back, my dad and uncles would be sitting around a tree stump cleaning fish and grandpa would go milk the cows.

I remember in my college years, my family was always getting together for the opener, which was earlier in Wisconsin. I was in college at Bemidji State and it used to drive me crazy that I couldn't go.

I started to work in fishing retail in 1985, and at Vados Bait in 1990. My cousin and I bought the store from Gordy and Sandy in June of 2000. Gordy, his uncle John, and his dad, Jim, started the bait store in 1947 on Lowry, then opened up this location in 1950 in the front part of their garage. They raised their family, lived right here in the house and walked into the bait shop every day. That's kind of the history of the bait business.

It really stayed that way with minimal additions for years until 1990. Gordy and Sandy had moved up to Ham Lake and we gutted the house, turned the whole thing into a bait shop.

The breakfast club guys still come in. They're old retired guys -- I should put a hold on that now that I'm catching up to them! -- who'd come in to grade minnows. They didn't know each other, but actually became great friends and started coming in here every morning to have coffee. They bring their own buckets to sit on, and answer the phone for me when I have to run out.

As the opener approaches, we'll have four 8-foot tanks with four or five sections of crappies, minnows, fatheads, suckers. Live bait is the base of our business. We're blessed with history, which has helped us be known, which helps us sell it faster, which makes it healthier.

One of the guys I hired when he was 14, now he's got a real job and is married, but he still works here. He just loves being around fishing, grading minnows and leeches.

All of our bait comes from Minnesota. You know those guys in school who were always catching salamanders? They grew up to be bait guys.