Who We Are

The Fishing Bait Business

The fishing bait part of the business was born in the fall of 1988 when Dennis' father, Lloyd, an avid fisherman, became disgusted with the quality of maggots he could buy for fishing. So he started raising them in his backyard! Dennis, who had a full time job at the time, moved the experiment 30 miles North to Porthill, Idaho, and began helping his dad. It was like a science project, except there wasn't any material on "How to raise a Maggot"!!

After a year of experimenting, Dennis was able to consistently raise a quality product that could be sold as fishing bait. Lloyd and his wife, Dorothy, at 77 years old, began peddling maggots to local fishing stores. In 1992, Dennis quit his job and together with his wife, Pam, started a wholesale business of selling the maggots to bait dealers throughout the United States and Canada.

After over 20 years as one of the nation’s largest wholesale bait retailers, we know the live bait business is a really narrow market that demands quality, and we provide that quality product.

Maggots/spikes are the preferred bait for many species of pan fish including Kokanee, a land-locked salmon, whitefish love them in the fall, and during the winter ice fishermen use them for perch.

The larvae are also used extensively in the pet food industry for birds and reptiles. We also get the occasional wild and crazy call from Hollywood "we need maggots or pupae for a movie". And most recently, we supplied the fly pupae for the controversial art exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York City.


Disposable Fly Pollinators

We entered the Research Seed Pollinating Market in the summer of 1993 with a phone call from Nick Molenaar of Crookham Company located in Caldwell, Idaho. He was inquiring about using the Blue-Bottle Fly for pollinating! Within a short time we were successful in providing quality Blue Bottle fly pupae to seed research companies. Once delivered, the pupae hatched into flies and began the work of pollinating.

It has been a very rewarding experience working with plant breeders across the United States and Canada. We are willing to work with any type of plants and experiments, and we continue to strive to provide the best quality flies.