OKOBOJI, Iowa | The electric knife runs early and often most summer days at Oh Shucks Bait & Tackle Center on the west side of West Lake Okoboji.
"We fillet all the fish," says Steve Pflueger, who bought the business 15 years ago and continues to "sharpen" his skills in the store's fillet site.
"We get the fish boneless and then can either cool them or freeze them," he explains. "It helps us create a one-stop shop for our customers."
Oh Shucks is one place where an angler can buy a licenses, purchase a pole, bait and return with the day's catch for its ultimately preparation.
"If people are staying at a motel, they don't have access to a cleaning station," Pflueger explains. "Even if they did, what do you do with the waste product?"
With that statement, as if on cue, a man stops by Oh Shucks to pick up the morning's fish-cleaning waste product. Pflueger says the man uses the waste in his turtle-trapping enterprise.
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Pflueger had visited the Iowa Great Lakes just once prior to his arrival in the late 1960s. He was a student at Wayne State College at the time, and came here for a summer job at the old Red Rooster, a restaurant at Arnolds Park, Iowa.
Pflueger worked two summers at the Red Rooster. After earning his degree in business administration from Wayne State, he returned and has been a fixture in the Iowa Great lakes ever since.
He owned and operated Mother Nature's for two decades; and did the same at the Back Porch for 10 years.
Fifteen years ago, he purchased Oh Shucks from Carlie and Bev Shuck, who had owned and operated the business for 27 years, taking over for Charlie's father. Bev Shuck still works at Oh Shucks.
"The biggest fish to come in here was a state record muskie," Bev Shuck says. "It was 51 pounds."
The state record for the muskie/northern hybrid is still presented here. It was reeled in by Shannon Green on West Lake Okoboji on Aug. 19, 1989. The fish is presented under glass not far from the coolers containing bait. According to Pflueger, mounted fish and game are part of the Oh Shucks allure.
"We've always featured local taxidermy," Pflueger says. "you get better bragging rights here than you would in just dusting them off at home."
It surely aids foot traffic and the swapping of stories, both pluses for a business that thrives on year-round recreation.
Cleaning those fish has and continues to pay dividends, let alone the bills.
"In the spring, we average cleaning 150 fish per days," says Pflueger, noting that all of his 10 employees can clean fish. "On the weekends, we double that amount."
It costs 40 cents to clean a pan fish; $1 for walleye and catfish.
Oh Shucks does a somewhat brisk business even as the summer season slows. Ice fishing, Pflueger explains, continues to draw anglers to the Iowa Great Lakes. Those fishers purchase gas, beer/soda and pizza, all Shucks staples.
"We go from a county population (Dickinson county) of 16,000 to more than 100,000 in the summer months," he says. "That's so different from when I started working up here. Back then, I think Arnolds Park had seven liquor licenses and four of them were for places that closed in the winter."
Pflueger remembers his days overseeing The Hut and The Peacock, bars that closed from Labor Day through Memorial Day.
