Joy of ice fishing leads to business venture

BIG LAKE — Greg Busch stands over a hole augured in a frozen lake, sharpened spear pointing downward, light refracting off egg shells and crab legs. With a hand-carved rainbow trout decoy below, he gently slips the spear through the water and on to a northern pike looking for a mate or a meal.

His father taught him how to carve these six- to eight-inch-long wooden decoys when he was a boy fishing the frozen lakes of Minnesota. With a few updates to his father’s paint job and body style, Busch has been slaying pike in Alaska for years following this method. Now, this childhood hobby has turned into his latest business venture.

Busch started BuschWhacker Decoys with his wife, Julie, after last year’s Houston Pike Derby. Julie approached the Chamber of Commerce and offered decoys as a prize for seven winners. Greg ended up making eight because one was a tie.

Never missing an opportunity, Julie Busch approached the representative from Sportsman’s Warehouse, a co-sponsor of the event. She asked them if they would be interested in selling the decoys at their store. After the strong interest generated at the derby, the representative said absolutely.

Sportsman’s Warehouse sold the decoys faster than Busch could make them working from a folding card table in the spare bedroom/studio of his log cabin-style house in Big Lake. The first order of 38 is long gone, and he is now working on back orders. On his table now are three small, gold-brown suckerfish and one rainbow trout.

The process begins with a rough block of cedar or bass wood. Busch sketches an outline in pencil and grinds down the block with a rotary tool. A wood file does the fine tuning, and sand paper finishes the form.

After the woodwork is done, he attaches hand-cut metal fins and a loop for the fishing line. He drills out a section in the bottom of the fish for lead weights to keep the fish upright in the water and then hand-paints the pattern and seals the finish. Plastic eyes finish the fish.

Before the fish hits the lake, each decoy is “swam” to check its weight and balance. The highly scientific proving grounds is family’s laundry room hopper sink.

After the final fin adjustments, it goes jigging through the water after the egg shells and bits of crab legs. The shells refract the light to attract the pike, and the decoy draws them closer. There, Busch waits with his spear.

“It doesn’t matter what species the lure is,” according to Julie Busch. “The pike is just looking for a date or dinner.”

Wanting more convincing evidence, Greg Busch is testing the different species in this year’s pike derby.

The species include pike, rainbow trout, suckerfish and model D-1. The D-1 decoys have the classic lure design of a white body and sharply contrasting head. Each model is six- to eight-inches long, but larger lures can be custom ordered.

Other than the hundreds of trophy pike, Buschwhacker Decoys caught the eye of Fish Alaska magazine, who called the product ice fishing’s “hot new item.”

When asked if they have plans of expanding to stores other than Sportsman’s Warehouse, Julie Busch says she hopes to ride their early success.

Barely one year into their venture, the local team hopes anglers around the state will soon look down to see BuschWhacker Decoys beneath the ice.

The Buschs can be reached at (907) 892-7543 or via email at buschwhackerdecoys@hotmail.com