Bait, Tackle & Tales
Poindexter's lures are more than just crickets and minnows
“I have a lot of fun here,” he says. “It’s very unusual to have anyone come in here who’s not happy, because they’re going fishing.”
It’s certainly peaceful with the sound of 2,500 crickets singing in their plywood box, the aerator gently bubbling in the minnow tank, and the soft drink cooler humming. For Buddy, this no-frills bait shop is more than peaceful. “This is home,” he says. “I grew up here.”
Here is in Gallatin, Tenn., near the Cumberland River and Old Hickory Lake, where a love of fishing lured Buddy’s grandfather, Jim Poindexter, to start the business in 1965.
“He thought that if he could get himself a bait shop he’d have access to plenty of bait to fish a lot,” says Buddy’s father, Floyd. “But that pretty much wound his fishing up. The store took up a lot of time.”
Jim constructed a plywood building that year—not much more than a shed—and opened for business. “He realized one day that if he sold everything he had almost every day, he wouldn’t have enough to make a living, so he jumped up and got his backhoe and started digging and building again,” Floyd remembers.
Upon tripling the size of the store, he began selling barbecue sandwiches, apples, rocking chairs, shrubs, and fireworks. “They’d work things in during the different seasons. He got enough stuff that he could make the business go.”
Customers responded to Poindexter’s happy attitude and the quality of the bait. “My granddaddy used to guarantee his minnows,” Buddy says with a chuckle. “He’d say, ‘If you don’t catch any fish with these minnows, bring them back, stay here, and I’ll go.’”
Following his enterprising instincts, Jim started a wholesale minnow business and made the rounds to other bait shops while his wife, Ruth, minded the store. In 1975 Floyd bought the business from his father, added again to the structure, and began selling hunting gear.
Today, Poindexter Bait Co. is a mixture of old and new. Along with ever-popular tackle such as floats, sinkers, and hooks are the latest gadgets to outsmart fish. Fading Polaroids of past captures are tacked next to fresh trophies.
A handwritten sign on the refrigerator next to the counter promotes its contents, including such delicacies as mealworms, shad guts, and liver. The menu stretches from sweet corn to salmon eggs.
If you need more than bait, the Poindexters will sell you everything from twine to trailer hitches. The contents of one shelf offer a vivid portrait of a fisherman’s life: chewing tobacco, Vienna sausages, hot sauce, Rolaids, and headache powders.
These days, there’s a credit card authorizer at the front counter, bottled water in the cooler, and the regular customers who gather next to the wood stove in the back of the store usually keep the television tuned to CNN or the stock market report.
A gathering place
Running the bait shop may be enjoyable, but it isn’t easy. “It’s a hard business,” Buddy says. “You have to be here before daylight and stay ’til after dark, seven days a week. You’ve got to love it.”
His mother, Betty, agrees. “My husband used to say I chirped like a bird in the morning. I had to start every day like it was going to be the best day of my life. Otherwise, I couldn’t make it, because I knew it was going to be a long one.”
“The first seven years we didn’t do anything but work,” she says. “We had a new boat and didn’t even pull it out of the garage.”
Buddy had plans to steer clear of the family business, but it eventually hooked him. “I went to school, got a degree in finance, and thought I wanted to wear a tie but my dad said, ‘Come back here and work with us.’ Now it’s T-shirts every day,” says Buddy, who officially bought the business from his father in 2000. His brother, Allen, runs the wholesale operation, which supplies minnows to regional bait shops and catfish to stock ponds. Because Allen’s business is just across a driveway, he lends a hand when needed.
Buddy’s wife, Janie, works by his side, following the pattern of the last two generations. “My grandmother, my mother, and my wife really deserve the credit for keeping the store going,” Buddy acknowledges.
“I enjoy it,” Janie says, between taking care of customers. “I know the people. We’ve got one little man who’s been coming in here for years. I know what he wants when he walks in. He wants two dozen shiners, and he’s out the door. All the people sitting back there are like family and that makes a difference.”
“They’re here every day,” Buddy says with a grin. “Winter days when it’s snowing, the place will fill up. Someone came in one day and said, ‘You’re busy today.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not busy. I’ve just got a bunch of people here eating snacks and drinking cold drinks.’ We’ve just got a gathering place for people to sit and figure out what they’re going to do on pretty days.”
Conversations tend toward a narrow focus. “They talk about fish they caught, fish they didn’t catch, and fish they wished they caught,” observes Buddy. “The tallest tales usually are true. You hear all the time about people who caught three 7-pound bass back-to-back, one on every cast. And people remember it that way even if it didn’t happen.
“Kenneth back there tells the story that he was fishing one night, and the fish were biting so well that the fish were jumping in the boat,” Buddy says with a straight face. “People look at him and say, ‘No, that didn’t happen.’ I was sitting there with him and, when he set the hook, the trout actually jumped up, hit him in the chest, and fell in the boat.”
Bill Wooten has stopped by the bait shop every morning on his way to work for 25 years and three generations of Poindexters. “I get to the bait shop about 7:15 and leave for work about quarter till 8. I usually get there first because it’s first-come, first-serve for the rocking chair,” which is the top choice of the four seats. “It’s kind of a round robin deal. If someone goes to get a Coke, somebody gets his seat. You just wait ’til you can get a seat.”
Good conversation and good company have kept him coming, Wooten says. “They’re good people,” he says. “They’re like family. If you want something and they don’t have it, they’ll order it. That means you don’t have to go to one of those big businesses and get in line. They keep going because they’re people’s people and they’ll do anything for you.”
Great rewards
The life of a bait shop owner may sound idyllic but it’s not without its worries. “The hazards of this business are taking care of your bait and weather,” Buddy says. “I’ve seen beautiful springs but it rained 10, 12 weekends in a row. My dad has seen it rain 21 weekends in a row.”
Sales will be good “if you can get your weather pattern right where it rains a little bit on Tuesday or Wednesday and it’s beautiful on the weekends.” Unfortunately, three generations of Poindexters have yet to figure out a way to control the weather.
“I wouldn’t change anything about it, even though it was not easy,” says Betty, who officially has retired but still helps out as needed. “The pay may not have been a lot but the rewards were so great.”
When the Poindexters do manage some time off, it’s not difficult to figure out where to find them. “Well,” Buddy says, “a lot of times, we go fishing.”
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