D&S Bait & Tackle gets new local owners and fly fishing gear | Business News

Steve Hurst came in for bobbers but the Madison man turned the discussion to the restoration of the Warner Park lagoon.

Mark Hellenbrand of Dane bought a fishing license but quickly began talking about the migrating pelicans devouring fish on the back waters of the Wisconsin River.

And Loren Ziglin of Middleton came to pick up a few flies and chat about trout fishing in Richland County.

This is the vibe that Patrick Hasburgh didn’t want to lose in his North Side neighborhood.

Located next door to the Culver’s on Northport Drive, the minnow tanks at D&S Bait & Tackle hum and bubble, the cooler is stocked with night crawlers and grubs and the sales floor is filled with racks of rods, reels and lures designed to attract both fish and anglers. Mounted bass, walleye and perch hang on the walls.

So when Gene and Sandy Dellinger began contemplating retirement after owning the shop for the past 31 years, Hasburgh, along with his wife, Ashley, knew he needed to act to ensure that one of the few locally owned, full-service fishing shops in Dane County would be around for years to come.

“It’s such an essential part of this community,” Patrick Hasburgh said, referring to the neighborhood in which he has lived the last 15 years with his family. “I just have a lot of faith in local bait shops. It’s rewarding work to help people find fish.”

The Hasburghs purchased the business from the Dellingers on March 1. Ashley will continue her career as a nurse practitioner at the VA Hospital in Madison but will manage the books. Patrick, a lifelong angler and a board member of the local Trout Unlimited chapter, will be the face of the business and is working six days a week behind the counter and on the sales floor while another employee will staff the shop on Sundays. They both will be overseen by a five-foot-tall cardboard cutout of Dellinger waving his right hand and standing near a wall of spinning reels.

The shop, just a short drive from the Warner Park boat landing on Lake Mendota, was founded in 1981 by Debbie and Steve Pappas who ran the store for 10 years before selling to the Dellingers, who kept the D&S name and expanded the offerings to include the rental of ice fishing shacks for perch anglers and archery equipment for deer hunting.

Those parts of the business were discontinued several years ago but the Dellingers were long supporters of the Yahara Fishing Club’s “Free Kids Fishing” events held twice a year, one for open water fishing, the other on the ice. The events offer up free rods and reels to youth anglers and offer instruction from volunteers.

Dellinger also was a conduit to fishing guides and was known for his recorded fishing reports. He acquired the (608) BIG-FISH phone number in 1998 when Steve Gerhardt’s Sports Center closed and offered up the number.

“Running your own small business can require a pretty big commitment of time,” Dellinger said Thursday by phone during his morning walk. “If you want to maintain profitability and keep your future in mind you have to do a lot of the labor yourself.”

When Dellinger purchased the business in 1991 there were “about a half dozen” similar shops within a 10-mile radius. Most of those are now gone, and D&S is now something of an anomaly on the local retail scene, even though Madison is home to some of the best lakes in the state, teeming with trophy muskie, northern, bass and panfish. The region has been inundated with big-box stores like Walmart, Cabela’s, Fleet Farm, Farm & Fleet and Dick’s Sporting Goods, all of which have substantial fishing departments.

Dorn Hardware, at Midvale Boulevard and the Beltline, is the only other locally owned, full-service bait and tackle shop in the Madison area. Ace Hardware in Middleton sells minnows but has a limited tackle department. Harley’s Liquor and Bait on Atwood Avenue is primarily a liquor store with minnow tanks in the back of the shop, while a BP convenience store in McFarland also sells minnows, but like many others has a limited selection of tackle.

“The business has changed a lot in that time but the ultimate goal was to have a job and work at something you enjoy,” Dellinger said. “Whatever success I had I would like to say it wasn’t something I wrote down on paper. It just evolved over time. But you have to be a people person.”

And Patrick Hasburgh appears to have that people part of the business already in hand. He plans to continue a series of fishing seminars held in the spring and late fall but wants to add seminars about fly fishing.

The back wall of the shop was bare on Wednesday but, for the first time, is being reserved for entry-level fly fishing gear like rods, reels, line, tippet and flies tied by John Gribb of Mount Horeb. Spinning and baitcaster reel repair will also continue thanks to Cory Steil, a former employee of the shop who now does the work out of his home in Oregon but with his customers using the shop to drop off and pick up the reels.

Hasburgh has visions of programs with the Warner Park Rec Center for young anglers, hosting fly tying events at the shop and building what he’s calling a “Little Free Lurebrary” for anglers to swap lures, much like the books that fill Little Free Libraries. In the past, Hasburgh has worked to build skate parks, invested time on restoration efforts at Warner Park and is a member of the Yahara Fishing Club.

“I’m deeply invested in the North Side and conservation and D&S seems like a great way to continue that,” said Hasburgh. “My whole mission with the shop is to try and make fishing more accessible, especially on the fly fishing end of things.”

Hasburgh, 43, grew up in Blanchardville fishing the Pecatonica River and using a fly rod to fish for trout on Gordon and Kittleson creeks. After high school he attended Madison Area Technical College to study graphic design, which led to two stints at In Business Magazine in Madison. He also had his own advertising agency for a time and since 2012 has been a stay-at-home dad and has worked part time as a cook at Ale Asylum.

Hasburgh was also one of the founding members of the Madison Skatepark Fund that raised more than $700,000 to build the $1.2 million Goodman Skatepark that opened in 2015 at McPike Park.

In 2021, Hasburgh helped lead volunteers to build a $5,000 “do-it-yourself” skate park on a flat piece of asphalt at Warner Park with plans to build a similar skate park at Elvehjem Park located near the intersection of Cottage Grove Road and Interstate 39-90 on Madison’s Far East Side.

But for now, Hasburgh is immersed in stocking his store, trying to find inventory, getting to know his customers and coming to the reality that he has his own business just a few blocks from his home that he shares with Ashley and their two sons.

“It’s exciting and terrifying all at the same time,” Hasburgh said. “My job is very much like being a bartender. It’s talking with people.”