EMILY Welcome to the Minno-ette Podcast Episode 2! My name is Emily Manning and I manage the Fredenberg Minno-ette and I’m here with my father Jason.
JASON Hello Emery!
EMILY Hello!
JASON Here it is on the other side of the Minnesota Fishing Opener, and since you’re a seasoned veteran, how did we as brand new owners of the legendary Minno-ette do?
From Fredenberg, Minnesota, The Minno-ette Podcast!
EMILY I thought that opener went great, honestly. It was a lot less congested in there and I just feel like that was kind of because we had pushed people to get their licenses earlier so I thought that that helped a lot just with all the traffic in there. It was definitely busy, Tig’s being there was awesome! I ate a lot of good food. I know everyone else there, all of the staff at the Minno were just stoked about the food. They thought it was amazing as well!
JASON Yeah it was, uh, it was wonderful to have those folks there they brought in a lot of people and we appreciate taking his crew because they are incredible and we’ll have them back every single opener if they’ll let us have them back! I hope they didn’t think it was a complete “hot mess.” Did you know I called Briana once a hot mess? I didn’t know that “hot mess” meant… well, it’s a very derogatory term. I thought “hot mes”s was like a Carrie Bradshaw from “Sex in the City” like “Oh my gosh! I’m a fabulous hot mess!” So she was being chaotic one day and she goes “Oh this, that!” I said “Baby, you’re a hot mess!” and she looked at me with daggers and I knew I’d done something wrong. So, hopefully Tig’s didn’t think we were a hot mess. I thought we kept it pretty well under-control.
EMILY I thought so too! I’m pretty sure they were sold out of most of their stuff by like 3:30-4 o’clock so I would say that they did pretty well. Hopfeilly that motivates them to come back.
JASON They were scheduled to be there noon to five. They opened up at noon sharp and by three o’clock they were out of food! So, thank you to everybody that stopped by and patronized Tig’s and of course patronized us at the Minno-ette. We went through a lot of bait. So, on the other side of the fishing opener, people always want to know you know — how did people do? So, what did you hear?
EMILY Well, I heard that people have just been catching northerns like crazy! I’ve heard from multiple people that they went out and they you know caught a few other things here and there, but they caught like 25 to 50 northern throughout the day.
JASON We had that one gentleman come in and he was buying the heavy pike. The biggest suckers we have right now. We’ll have decoys a little bit later on in the year for the muskie fisherman, but he was in three times! Three times to get his heavy pike. He kept refilling him because he was catching northern after northern after northern. He did get a couple walleyes in there, they’re all in the slots so he couldn’t keep them, but the fish were biting for some people and some people you could say this about any opener.
EMILY By the way, I just wanted to thank everyone in the community for their patience while our bathroom is under construction.
JASON The plan was to have the bathroom completely remodeled and finished by the opener, but as they say the best laid plans…I forget the rest of this thing we’ll just put ellipses after that but it doesn’t always go according to plan. So we had the biffy out to the side of the building. We did our best to keep it clean. People were very understanding. When these bathrooms are done — and they’re close — we brought the Minno-ette to the 21st century! Now when you have to flush, you don’t have to touch anything you just wave your hand in front of a doohickey and it takes care of it! You want to wash your hands, you wave your hand in front of a doohickey, the water comes out and the same with the soap and everything else. And it’s ADA compliant.
EMILY As a bathroom attendant at the Minno-ette, I have to say I’m very grateful for this upgrade.
JASON Yeah! So, we appreciate everybody’s patience when it comes to that aspect but it’s going to be nice when it’s done which is just a couple days away.
EMILY Something that is up and running now are our brand new bait tanks. They are kick-ass! I don’t know if I can say that…maybe just throw a bleep in there! They’re awesome. I think it’s so cool to be able to see the minnows. I know the kids just love it it, it’s fun.
JASON We may have taken a financial loss over the weekend with the number of little kids that came up and they wanted a pet minnow and we got a couple of tadpoles in the mix too. When you get bait from your supplier, I’ll bet you 10 times I went and grabbed a cup and I fished out a minnow — a big one small one, a tadpole for the kids, so they could take a little pet away. It’s really cool to see. Kids really get into it and you can see your bait! You can see what you’re getting. It’s lively, it’s right there. It’s almost like going and picking out your lobster at the Red Lobster
EMILY Exactly, yeah!
JASON Actually, it’s nothing like that here. Well, you kind of get what I’m going with though. But, they look good and they’re up and running so fresh bait, happy bait. It’ll catch fish. Certain conditions apply at the Minno-ette.
EMILY We’ll do our best to keep everything that we can stocked. We were able to maintain our shiners and leeches and crawlers throughout the opener and I’m hoping that we can do that throughout the entire summer.
JASON Just one thing on the bait, and I’m going to bring this up because selling live bait is you’re still selling live bait and once in a while you get a bad batch. We had a person come in and say “Hey, I got some crawlers it was a bad batch.” And once in a while, when you’re doing the sheer amount of bait that we do, you get a bad batch sometimes. We try our best to stay on top of it, but if you ever ever get some bait from us and it’s not up to snuff, you bring it back we will give you your money back! We will replace the bait. We will never give you a hard time about that. We just want to make sure that you get what you pay FOR.
EMILY As long as we’re talking about bait, I just thought that maybe we should run through our current bait selection. So, currently for minnows, we have crappies, chubs, light pike, light northern, and shiners. Then we also have leeches and crawlers for live bait.
JASON Yeah our leech supplier is really good and as we get a little bit deeper into the spring and summer, we’ll start getting the big jumbo leeches in. But, the leeches are healthy right now and we have plenty of them and same with the shiners. We have a couple of different pipelines for shiners and we know that that can be a tough one to keep and I’m not going to promise we’ll have them all summer long but we have multiple suppliers so we’re going to do our best to keep them in stock all year. With that said, you’ve been working your tail off ordering groceries and overseeing the operations at the Minno-ette, but you have had an opportunity to get out and do some fishing. Because listen, as manager of the legendary Fredenberg Minno-ette, part of your job description is to be on the water so you can give accurate fishing reports and you’ve been doing particularly well over the past couple of days. I keep getting pictures from you, and I’m not gonna lie, I look at Briana and I start cursing up and down and and saying bad things! Okay, I don’t do that…I’m actually beaming with pride. You’ve done really well with walleye lately.
EMILY Yeah! I set my personal best two days in a row here. I have to thank Emily Connor for sure because she took me out and showed me…
JASON Cornbread! Our cornbread! So you had a 22″ the other day?
EMILY And then a 25″ walleye and yesterday also when I caught that thing, I had a hook break off while I was bringing a fish to the boat and about 30 minutes later I tied on the same color hook and threw it back out there and then caught the same fish that still had the hook in its mouth which I thought was crazy!
JASON Bonus, you got the hook back! So that’s serendipitous! You know what that is? That’s clean living when karma’s playing you a little hand like that that’s clean living is what it is. Memorial Day is coming up very very soon so this was our first opener and as owners, Briana and I are looking at Memorial Day, and everybody’s saying “storms a’ coming!” It’s going to be busy from what i understand.
EMILY We are ready to welcome all the people coming up to stay at their cabins for the summer. There’s a lot of locals that we just love having around during that time since we only get to see him for such a brief… you know, Minnesota summers are short. We’re really excited.
JASON So, as we head into Memorial Day, we’ll be stocked up with tackle, with bait, with gas premium for your boats and side by sides and atvs…What am I missing? Groceries, snacks, pop, all that good stuff. We are working on the liquor store. I think I can safely say that the liquor store is going to be a thing. We are in the very early stages of punching a door into a section of the store because the Minnesota state law dictates you have to have a separate entrance, a separate point of sale. So we’re going to take a part of the store, block that off for the liquor store, and then it’s a good thing I played a lot of Tetris as a kid because I’m gonna have to figure out where in the world am I gonna put all that stuff that’s sitting in that area of the store already, but we will figure it out it’s gonna be interesting. But, we’ll get’er done. I’m wondering, do you have a special interest in the liquor store now because in just two days my little girl, my firstborn, apple of my eye, all that stuff turns 21 years old?! You’re blushing! Why are you blushing?
EMILY I don’t know! You don’t have to make a big deal.
JASON That’s a big deal to me, it just makes me feel old! So you’re going to take some well-earned vacation coming up. You’ll be spending your 21st birthday down in Florida seeing an old friend and hanging out on the beach. So good for you!
EMILY Thank you! I’m so excited!
JASON Are you going to do any fishing in Florida?
EMILY Absolutely!
JASON What are you going to do? You’re going to do ocean fishing? Are you going to…?
EMILY Yeah I thought about fishing the ponds, but I think I’m just gonna stick to the ocean because then I can just throw a PVC pipe in the beach and you know just let it go,
JASON Kick back on the beach! You gonna have a coldie?
EMILY Well, I mean, obviously!
JASON You’re gonna be legal!
EMILY My first one, my first one.
JASON Your first one ever?
EMILY Yes!
JASON Wow, I knew that you were pure as the driven snow going into your 21st birthday. One thing I want to mention is our Facebook Page. We have a new website that’s up check it out — minnoette.com. Yes, that’s it right — minnoette.com. This is information I should probably know. Along with that our Facebook Page which we stay very active on. We’re encouraging people to post pictures of anything that you catch because we have our Minno Wall of Fame at the store which is a TV screen and we just flash pictures of fish that folks have caught here in the area lakes. So, it can just go through a loop throughout the store. So, you walk in you might see your friends and neighbors with a dandy or something really small! We don’t care, we just want fish pictures so please post them at our Minno-ette Facebook Page.
EMILY Or email them to manager@minnoette.com or DM us on Instagram.
JASON There you go! I can tell you already have one foot out the door. You’re on your way to Florida, aren’t you?
EMILY All right, well…
JASON Should we call that episode 2?
EMILY Yes! That’s a wrap.
JASON Episode 2 of the Minno-ette Podcast.
EMILY We’ll catch you next time!
This has been Episode 2 of The Minno-ette Podcast. Thanks for listening!
