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The allure? Personal service

Something's fishy about this career change, and the owners of South Shore Bait & Tackle planned it that way.

By ERIKA VIDAL
Published December 23, 2005

When you walk into South Shore Bait & Tackle, you're sure to smell the live shrimp and pinfish in the tank.

The walls are a shade of military green. A colorful selection of lures - red fish, white fish, green fish - hang on the back wall. There are knives, bait buckets, gloves, fishing rods and just about every other kind of fishing accessory.

The owners, Larry and Barbara Chalmers, try to call every customer by name. If they don't welcome you, Mattie, their 2-year-old Maltese and chihuahua mix, will greet you in the parking lot.

It's homey touches like this that have helped the couple's bait and tackle shop on U.S. 41 survive, even against competition from companies like Wal-Mart.

In January, the Chalmerses took a risk when they decided to open the store. For a year and a half they put themselves on a strict budget and saved about $12,000.

"If that's what you really want," Barbara told her husband, "I'm behind you."

The couple, who met while working in the circulation department at the Tampa Tribune, quit their jobs and downsized, selling their house in Brandon and moving into a smaller one. They've invested 120 percent back into their business, they said.

"We designed a plan on how we wanted the business to look," said Larry, 50, who wears gold-rimmed aviator style glasses, "and then we just worked our butts off, and that plan worked."

He attributes his business discipline to two decades as an operations specialist in the Navy.

Barbara, 45, followed in the adventurous steps of her parents, who once quit their jobs to start a carnival. She didn't know a thing about fishing before they opened the business.

For Larry, fishing was a family tradition. He's the oldest of five fishing fanatics. His brother, an established bass fisherman, was once featured on a box of Wheaties.

They found a building right down the road from Williams Park, which hosts the largest boat ramp on the Alafia River and a fishing pier. The huge parking lot was perfect for people to pull in with their boats, they said.

"When we first walked in here," he said about the shop, "this was nothing but a gutted-out old building."

There were even pews from when the shop used to be a church.

Barbara has helped add a woman's touch to the business. "This is not just going to be a bait and tackle store," she said. "This is going to be different."

They've added a section of home decor items like coasters, antique lure shower curtains, fishing reel toilet paper holders, decorative fishing lines and fishing-inspired picture frames.

Her 15-year-old calico cat, Squeaky, even lives at the shop.

Larry has held several seminars to teach people how to handle a rod and reel and how to tie knots.

"No other shops do that," Barbara said.

"We love our business," Larry said. "I'm not afraid of the other shops, and we've established ourselves in this first year."

What's more, he said he believes in the area's growth, and he said they want to "make sure we're in town to ride that wave for the next 10 years."

[Last modified December 22, 2005, 09:29:03]