Fillet King®

Well we are back from the ice fishing show. I can't figure out if this is the last show of the season or if it is the first show of the new season. I think it falls into the first catagory as new equipment shows up at this show. At any rate it is a top notch show and we always enjoy meeting up with the industry friends we hadn't seen all summer.
We had a super show and were provided a real treat by meeting Dave Genz and his daughter Missy. (He was the featured speaker at the seminars this year.) We were holding our Filleting Event on Sunday with 2 time Grand Master Capt.Pat Kalmerton of Wolf Pack Adventures (Wisconsin)challanging Joe Honer of joeguidesyou.com (South Dakota). Last year Joe unseated Pat by .03grams to take the trophy and break Pat's winning streak. We were thrilled to have Dave enter our event and challange both our Grand Master Filleters. The three of them had their chance at one blue gill picked from a bucket we used for product demonstration during the show. Here is the fun part--we fillet thawed pan fish of several varieties that we keep frozen for the shows. I have learned to thaw them in lots so that they do not get mushy soft before we fillet them during a show day. Once they pass the stage of show ready the next phase is garbage ready. By Sunday afternoon (late) the event was announced and the crowd gathered around and filled the bleachers. I had told the three contestants the condition of the fish would make the filleting "difficult" and offered them fresh trout from the trout pond next to our booth. To a man they elected the difficult pan fish. We had an instant bond. I grew up in a town in New York State that had one of the two brown trout hatcheries in the state. My brothers and I fished the stream that ran through town since we were kids and brought home trout for breakfast like clockwork. We had learned to field dress them by 10 and they were fried (head on)in bacon grease and cracker crumbs. At the shows we often have people, mostly kids, ask us to fillet the trout they catch out of the pond. I do it as it is a good crowd pleaser and it sells boards but in my heart I feel like I am violating the trout. My three contestants felt the same way about filleting a trout like a blue gill (or perch) and went for the "difficult" soft, mushy, panfish. What good sportsmen the three of them are!
Joe retained his title, and Pat and Dave were close to the winning yield, but the day belonged to Joe. Now there are two two-time Grand Master Filleters in the books.
Dave took a Fillet King Single Board along with him telling us that he would give it a good workout this winter. We hope to run into Dave and Missy again at shows this year.
When you have Dave using your product I think Martha Stewart said it best "that is a good thing". We beat a nasty snow storm home by half a day this year, and now the weather score is 1-1, for last year we got blasted with winter storms at the St. Paul show.

I was working on my sail boat Berdina Sue (Bayfield 29 Cutter Rigged Auxilary Cruiser) late in the fall in her slip in Fond du Lac's harbor. Locals call it "the big hole" but the water level was lowering every day as the lake lowered for the off-season. I had been feeding on the pan fish all summer and had my usual three lines out of ultra-light tackle with 4-6 lb lines. I had been skunked for days and had switched to oakmeal for breakfast instead of the couple of perch or gill I had gotten used to all summer. Locals informed me that the Northern Pike had invaded the harbor for the first time in several years and were eating my breakfast for me. One of my friends had heard the rumors and stopped by with some medium sized flathead minnows as all the chubs in town had sold out. The next morning I discovered several of them had succumed and were belly up in the bucket. I had this thought of a lazy Northern cruising the wall looking for easy food and wondered what he would do if I offered a "no brainer" meal. Taking a big jig I loaded a half dozen of the dead minnows on the hook and attached a big bobber above it and threw it against the wall. I then preceeded to start the end of season check list of putting the boat up for the winter. About an hour later I was on the dock checking some gear and I saw the bobber swim by. About ten feet away a Northern exploded out of the channel scaring the daylights out of me and danced looking straight at me, my 4 lb. line (without a steel leader) hanging from the corner of his lip. If I could understand fish thoughts I know he was thinking "you gotta be nuts" 4 lb.test, no leader, gob of dead minnows?"
I jumped onto the Berdina Sue and tried to remember which of the rods had the dead minnows on it. I reeled in one but it wasn't the right one so I tried the other and it reeled in with no apparant resistance. I was putting it down when I saw the Northern not 3 feet away at the back of the boat was actually attached to the end of the line. The small pan fish net was right there so I lowered it and the Northern swam straight into it. I lifted it with some difficulty into the cockpit and we looked at each other neither one of us knowing what to do next. His first flop got him out of the net and he flipped his head and cut the line as if to say "you got to be kidding me". He chased me around a little and finally settled down with me standing on the net controlling at best half of him.
It was apparant that he had chosen suicide rather than have the gang find out he went for a gob of stinky minnows stacked like shishkabobs on 4 lb.test instead of earning his dinner like a self-respecting Northern should do. I am sure he snapped the line out of spite just to show me it was a joke. I took him down to my friend's shop (Brian Carter of Fond du Lac Seafood Company)and wrapped him whole for the freezer. He will be the main attraction at one of our shows this season, (probably the Milwaukee Sports Show) where Dan Small(Dan Small Outdoors)or one of my other Master Filleters will show the crowd the proper way to get Y bones out of a Northern Pike. Out of respect I will not dwell on the particulars of his demise at the show or that he was obvisiously suicidal. His reputation with the gang will remain untarnished for dispite his shortcomings he was a Wisconsin Northern Pike for many years.
Dee

Hello and welcome to our site! I am Denise but everyone calls me Dee and I pay the bills around here. We have been marketing the Fillet King Products since coming to market almost 4 years ago. We started at fishing and sporting shows and realized right away we had a pretty good product. The modular idea was new to filleting products and it made sense. Why not have a system that you can make to fit your needs? When we demonstrate the product with pan fish at shows, it sells itself. Who would not want a fillet system that handles the mess and grips the fish like no other product in the market? Why fillet in the cold when you can do it watching a ball game and sipping on a brew?

It was neat to discover repeat customers at shows because the wives had discovered the kitchen uses of the product and laid claim to it. A big burly guy telling me his wife stole his fillet board makes my day. Let's face it there are not a lot of us women in the industry competing against the good old boys or the corporate giants. I have to tell you that they have all been very supportive as I stepped into the market. The guides have been especially helpful. They love the product and push it for us with their clients. My favorite was at our first show when a guide/resort owner from way up in the UP of Michigan told me that he fillets thousands of fish each season. He said he hates the slime factor as much now as when he was a kid doing his first fish. He bought 10 boards and was our first "big" sale.
That was a lot of boards ago now, but it was special.

We will be inviting Blog entries from some of our celebrity Master Filleters and people we have met in the industry. I am sure you will recognize the names so click on the blog page to see who is saying what about something related to fishing, cleaning, and eating pan and game fish.

Catch and Release was a concern when I decided to bring the product to market. Then I discovered how many fish are caught and die when released espceially in pan fishing and that even the "pros" keep a few for the pan when the big guys aren't active. I found out another thing about catch and release that I want to share with you. There seems to be a direct relationship with economics and "catch and release". Food prices increase and times get tougher and the "catch and release" option comes into question, especially if fresh fish is a part of your regular diet, and you have a family to feed. So it is good for me to know that my product is recession proof! I myself practice catch and release on nice big walleye, bass, and pan/sports fish as do most sports fishermen but I love catching pan fish to eat and share with my friends.

You can see by the map on the site we have more and more dealers now and are growing the business beyond our local Wisconsin marketplace. We had a retail web site for awhile to gather mostly information on what types of sales to expect as we started. Now we are in the process of marketing only through dealers and web stores and can tell you this about the initial sales. Half of our web orders were for multiple units, either twin and family packs or two or more single units, We got orders from all over the country. We have yet to have one unit returned because it did not perform to exactly what we said it would do. We have had about 6 units warp in too high a dish washer setting and we replaced every one with a new board.
People who catch pan fish by the bucket and purchased our product have become deciples of the product and have been our best advertising and promotional force.

Well so much about where we have been and what we are up to. I will be contributing tid bits to the Blog as times goes on and when I get the chance I will drop in a story or two for you to enjoy. I am told I tell a good story so I will post a few and you can be the judge. Fair enough?

Dee

This is just the beginning. I'm sure Dee will have a great variety of information here on the Fillet King® blog.
Thanks for visiting,
Joel "Doc" Kunz
website administrator