R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press At Bay View Bait and Tackle in Gladstone, owner Diane Carlson packs up some crawlers for longtime customer Denny Merrill.

R. R. Branstrom

rbranstrom@dailypress.net

EDITOR NOTE: The Daily Press will be featuring a series of articles on local businesses, highlighting their history and what makes them unique. The series will run on a regular basis in the Daily Press.

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GLADSTONE — South of the Terrace, a stone’s throw from the water, the shop run by Diane Carlson — originally from Rock, now of Escanaba — is aptly named Bay View Bait and Tackle. Known for being a good source for fresh, live bait, the shop also sells fishing and hunting licenses, ORV stickers, lake maps, and tackle from both big-name and local suppliers.

Bay View stands at 7110 U.S. 2 and 41 and M-35, connected to the Bay View Motel, but the two are not affiliated.

It’s the third location from which Carlson has been selling bait. 35 years ago, she and her then-husband purchased Ludington Bait and Tackle, which had been operating in downtown Escanaba since the 1950s. They took it over in 1989.

Carlson hired Chris Wahl, who would later become a business partner and an eminent and well-liked figure in the fishing community, in 1992.

In 1996, John and Betsy Anderson, owners of the Bay View Fish Market — which was located up the road, near where the Barn on the Bay Ice Cream Parlor is now — approached Carlson to see if she’d be interested in opening a bait shop in the other half of their building. She did so, complying with the stipulation that the store take the name Bay View to match that of the fish market.

By that point, Wahl and Carlson were running the show. Carlson said that running Bay View Bait and Tackle in addition to Ludington Bait and Tackle became a lot to handle, so they kept the more successful one and closed the shop in Esky in 2003.

For about 15 years, the bait shop enjoyed a steady stream of customers at the site while it belonged to the Andersons. But when the property sold, its new owners had other plans, and the business had to relocate.

Friendly neighbors Dan and Ellen Kotowski owned the nearby Bay View Motel — no connection to the fish market or the bait shop, despite the name! — and offered up a new home.

Bay View Bait and Tackle moved into a space there — today’s current location — that had been converted from two motel rooms. Patrons followed.

“It’s a small town. Lot of loyal customers,” said Carlson.

One such example is Denny Merrill. The day the Press stopped by, he was in for a fish-hunt combo license, bait and conversation. Though he now lives in Cornell, Merrill said Bay View continues to be his “go-to place,” as it has been for about 30 years.

When the seasons change, the stock rotates a bit — Carlson said that her winter products have been relegated to some boxes and a less prominent section of the store for the time being.

While business can depend on the weather, many anglers aren’t fussy.

“I get a lot of people that are coming all year long,” Carlson said. “But there are people like Denny who go to Florida for the winter, so I don’t see them at all. There are some I don’t see in the winter, some I don’t see in the summer … but most people who fish, fish all year.”

In that category was Wahl, who passed away from cancer four years ago. Not only is he remembered and missed by Carlson and others who knew him, he has also been immortalized with a plaque near one of his favorite fishing spots on the Ford River. Installed by Frank Pearson of the Bay de Noc Great Lakes Sportsfishermen, it was designed after stickers made by Wahl’s brother and sister-in-law with the same artwork.

“Forever fishing with the Bait Shop Guy,” reads the lettering above the silhouette of an angler standing in a boat with a whopper of a pike on the end of his line. Below, it names Wahl as the “Ambassador for Bays de Noc.”

The text references the nickname first given to Wahl by a child and then used as a sign-off by Wahl online — “the Bait Shop Guy” — and also the honorary title “Ambassador” to refer to his tendency to point other anglers in the right direction. Carlson said that Wahl had a couple of Master Angler awards for pike he caught.

Carlson has been running Bay View Bait and Tackle herself, with the occasional aid of a friend, for the past four years. When business slows in the off-season, hours are reduced.

Now that spring is here, the shop along the highway is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week — “until October or so,” said Carlson. When people ask if Carlson has any plans for retirement, she says she intends to continue running Bay View Bait and Tackle.