“I wanted to start working at Northland because, I’d say mostly because I’m obsessed with fishing,” says Joe Ohman, a picker for Northland Fishing Tackle.

From humble beginnings to thousands upon thousands of products on their roster, Northland Fishing Tackle is helping anglers one rig at a time.

“We started in 1975 with John [Peterson] pouring jigs for his guide business, and then that exploded. They were catching a bunch of fish on that. It just grew out of his garage and then they’ve always been in Bemidji too, so that’s the cool local thing there,” says Kyle Waterman, marketing for Northland Fishing Tackle.

With their distinctive yellow packaging and Northern Minnesota backwoods roots, the company says they’ve become successful because they’re selling to themselves. Nearly everyone who works with Northland is a fisherman.

“You know, anytime you’re out on the water and fishing you’re always trying to think of new ideas to catch fish, and that’s kind of something when you’re in the office, too. You’re always just kind of bouncing ideas off each other. ‘Hey, maybe this will work, maybe that will work,’” says Jack Kons, digital communications and Pro Staff Manager for Northland Fishing Tackle.

“’Made by Fisherman for Fisherman’ is one of our taglines so it’s us, in house, making the products so that the employees that we have understand fishing from walleyes to bass to panfish, so when we come up with a new concept or product it’s all done in house. It’s tested on the lakes around here,” says Waterman.

The company is home based in Bemidji, but they ship out all over the world. They use a lot of different materials on their products to catch any kind of fish there is. They pay attention to the tiniest of details to ensure product satisfaction.

Kons says, “Another way that we try to stay innovative is the materials that we put into our products. So, obviously lead, tungsten, brass, bismuth is one that we use for a more eco-friendly product.”

While they’re an international brand, they make sure to keep Bemidji in mind with everything they do. They support the community by giving back every chance they get.

“We support some of the local events that go on, some of the tournament and whatnot. Some of the fishing clubs in the high school and the colleges. We like to stay involved with that because that’s our future anglers and our local anglers, too, so…” says Sam Larsen, visual marketing coordinator for Northland Fishing Tackle.

By — Shirelle Moore