Gone fishin’: Bailey details experience of hosting show
NEW BREMEN — A hobby helped turn a former St. Marys police offer into a television personality watched by people from all over the country.
Russ Bailey, who hosts the NKTelco-produced “BrushPile Fishing,” grew up fishing for carp in the Ottawa River.
After serving in the Air Force and getting a job at the Lima Army Tank Plant, Bailey told members of the New Bremen New Knoxville Rotary Club on Tuesday morning that his free time was spent going up to Lake Erie to fish for walleye.
When he got a job with the St. Marys Police Department, he began going crappie fishing with friends from work.
“I was hooked from that night on,” he said. “I thought it was a blast.”
His passion for crappie fishing grew from there and he had quite a successful professional career, competing for 14 national championships and winning a slew of tournaments along the way.
After the travel got to be too much, Bailey started a guide service in St. Marys which he called “pretty successful.”
From there, Bailey made his way to television when one of his sponsors called him and asked to make a show centered around crappie fishing.
“When I got this call, I said I’d do it. When I hung up, I thought, ‘I have no idea what any of this is about,” joked Bailey.
“Midwest Crappie” ran for eight years, but Bailey said that it was tough on him because he was responsible for putting together sponsors and buying air time.
“It got to be too much,” he said.
He was out of the TV game for now, but he was far from done.
Bailey recalled getting a call from B’n’M Poles, his “No. 1 sponsor from day one.”
“The owner called me and said, ‘We need to work on some informational DVDs and let’s get them in Bass Pro Shops,” said Bailey.
“We ended up putting three volumes together called “Anytime Crappie.” When our first one hit the market, it was the No. 1 selling DVD in all of Bass Pro Shops.
It was crazy, I never thought that would happen.”
Following the success of that, Bailey said he was called by Preston Myers, CEO of NKTelco, about doing a fishing show for them.
Bailey was skeptical because he felt that NKTelco didn’t know what they were getting into because shooting an outdoors show is different from other productions.
“When we go fishing, we may travel 500 miles to get a show and the conditions are great and all of a sudden, the fish turn off and we don’t get the show at all,” said Bailey, adding that he told his wife he thought it would only last for one season.
“Last year, we made our 100th episode,” remarked Bailey. “Never would I have thought that. Right now, we’re recording for our ninth season.”
BrushPile Fishing has sent Bailey all over the country, fishing with fellow crappie fishermen, professional athletes, veterans and other media personalities.
Bailey said he was contacted by Court McGee, who found success as a mixed martial arts fighter in the UFC, and they filmed an episode together.
“He’s the first celebrity that called us and wanted to be on the show,” said Bailey. “He caught the biggest crappie he’s every caught while we were taping.”
Bailey went down to Louisiana to fish with John Godwin of “Duck Dynasty” fame, saying that he was nervous to do it because of how popular their show was at the time.
After they were done, Bailey told him how he was nervous and Godwin said that the fellow Duck Commander folks were all fans of his show “and we watch it every week.”
“That was pretty cool,” said Bailey. “I didn’t expect to hear that.”
But Bailey said the biggest thing he’s ever been part of has been a fishing tournament held at Delaware Lake with proceeds going to the Travis Mills Foundation.
Mills is a former Army veteran from Michigan who had both his arms and legs blown off in the war.
“It would have been easy to quit … but he battled through all this and now he goes around the country and speaks,” said Bailey.
The Travis Mills Foundation is located in Maine and it’s a place where disabled veterans and their families can go for vacation, at no cost.
“It’s just by far the most important thing I’ve ever been involved in,” said Bailey. “For the last two years, we throw a tournament at Delaware Lake and both years we’ve raised about $30,000 for the Travis Mills Foundation.”
With the success of “BrushPile Fishing,” NKTelco recently moved all of its media to its own YouTube channel where every episode can be viewed in their entirety.
Bailey said one of the reasons was the success of the channel, having earned 400,000 views on the channel just in January alone.
But that’s not all for the growth of the show, as they recently released the BrushPile Fishing app and put out a podcast.
“Preston called me and said, ‘I want to start doing podcasts.’ I said, ‘Good for you, Preston, what is that?” Bailey joked.
The app allows users to keep a log of the date, water temperature, air temperature, what equipment was used, among many other things.
“On the app, you can do that digitally and it saves the information and you can share it with other anglers,” said Bailey.
He’s also dipped his toes into designing fishing poles as B’n’M Poles now sells the Russ Bailey Signature Series, which sold more than $385,000 worth of poles last year.
“It’s been a blessing. I’ve been lucky, I won’t say I haven’t,” said Bailey.
While Bailey is hopeful the show continues, he said if the show ends tomorrow, he’ll have no regrets.
BrushPile Fishing can be found online at BrushPileFishing.com and on Youtube.