Today I had a great meeting with Jeff Cope and Jay Geeding from Wal-Mart Headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Both gentlemen are Category Managers for Pure Fishing(Berkley, Penn, etc.) and asked me to assist in providing customers with a better saltwater selection and improving the overall direction of the fishing department in many stores. Started the morning at the Gulf Breeze Wal-Mart and I hope I offered some creative and thoughtful ideas to improve the saltwater choices in the fishing department. I thought I had a pretty firm grasp on the fishing industry but, like with fishing, there’s always much more to learn and I did. Well, this is where the productivity ended. After our meeting, we decided to jump on my boat and go stick a few redfish and trout. We weren’t too excited about the temps, wind, water clarity and bright blue skies but they insisted that I knew what I was doing and they just wanted to get out on the water. That’s exactly what we did. I honestly can’t remember the last time I(or clients) didn’t catch a single fish in ANY conditions!! The timing was classic as these guys aren’t exactly the company you want to have a below average trip with! Fished for two hours, got 3 decent bites and saw a handful of redfish but incredibly, they just wouldn’t pick up the bait. Did the earth counter-rotate today? Oh well, I know where not to go for tomorrow’s and Saturday’s trips.
