Kerry Hoody, commonly known as “the bait guy,” rakes the bottom of the tank with a dipper for dead minnows at his business Huron Live Bait in Imlay City, Michigan on September 20, 2020. “It’s all-day work, nonstop. And at any time of day the minnows could be running down at the river and I’d stop what I was doing and drive the bait truck over there. You always are trying to be one step ahead of the minnows.”
Kerry, 54, makes a minnow delivery near Romeo, Michigan on Thursday, December 26, 2019. Kerry has worked in the minnow business all his life. After working for a few friends' business during his young adulthood, Kerry decided to open up his own live bait business, Huron Live Bait, in Imlay City, Michigan, where he sells perch bait, crick bait, and walleye bait. Going out for a day of fishing is usually a day meant for relaxing and enjoying yourself out on the water. It's a day to take your mind off of work and everyday life. That day is a lot different for your bait guy.
Kerry has been wholesaling live bait for most of his life. He catches most of his bait during the summer in Port Huron, Michigan under the Blue Water Bridge in the waters of Lake Huron. During the fall and winter, Kerry has to search other bodies of water, like brooks or channels or cricks, to find where the minnows have traveled. There are a few live bait catchers/dealers in the thumb of Michigan near Kerry, and they all compete to find, catch, and sell the minnows. Even if Kerry knows where he's able to catch minnows, there could be another bait guy down there already scooping them up. It's an extremely competitive business. If Kerry's not there to grab them at the right time at the right place, somebody else has already got the minnows in the tank of their truck and driving them home.
Kerry asks his youngest daughter, McKena, for help seining one of the tanks on Friday, January 3, 2020. Seining usually involves two people working together to enclose the minnows inside the net to get them all to one side of the tank for easier access to transport, sell, or sort the minnows. Kerry does everything for his business. He's usually a one-man-band, but he employs a couple well-trusted guys, or one of his daughters, that he'll call occasionally to help him on certain trips to the river or marina.
There's a lot of detail to catching, maintaining, and selling minnows. One false move, such as not providing enough oxygen or not getting the water cold enough, and those minnows are dead. Kerry knows all the details from experience, learning from the mistakes in order to improve and be successful.
Kerry seines his pond to gather the minnows he kept in the water for the winter on Friday, January 3, 2020. Not only is the job mentally draining, but it's extremely physical as well. A constant cycle of running that break wall in constant search of a running school of minnows, taking the 14-foot-long net and dropping it down into the water and pulling it down the wall, and lifting it back up and over the break wall's railing with the occasional help of the other bait guy standing alongside. Once the minnows stop running or Hoody has enough to fill the tanks on his bait truck, he takes his minnows home and drops them into the tanks in his minnow shed. If he doesn't have the amount he needs, he seines the pond in hopes that will hit the number of gallons he needs to deliver to the stores.
After seining up the tank, Kerry fills buckets up with minnows and dumps them into the tanks on the truck for delivery on Sunday, February 21, 2021. Most people don't understand how much hard work is put into catching these minnows. An average catching day starts around 2 a.m. for Kerry and doesn't really have a specified clock-out time. He has to figure out when and where the minnows are running, and if they're not there, he's got to find them or try all over again the next morning. It's very hit-or-miss, minnows are very spontaneous and it's hard to figure out their movement patterns.
Kerry loads up emerald shiners from the in-ground tanks into the tanks on the back of the bait truck at Huron Live Bait in Imlay City on Sunday, February 21, 2021 in preparation for a delivery.
A customer pulls in as Kerry loads the truck up with emerald shiners for another delivery on Sunday, February 21, 2021. Bait catchers have to be pretty sneaky about where they find their minnows, and they don't give out information on the businesses they deliver their bait to, either. Knowledge is power here, and if you aren't doing your research and finding out where these minnows are, you're not making any money.
Kerry takes a break from the job to rest on the couch with his three-week-old granddaughter on his birthday on Saturday, April 3, 2021. Kerry doesn't really get to take many breaks off his job, even though he's his own boss. When the minnows run or when a business calls last-minute to place an order, he knows he has to be there despite what he has going on. On the breaks he does allow himself, Kerry makes the most of it. He catches, delivers, comes back home, and tries to get to bed as soon as possible to do it all over again the next day.