Clark’s Bait and Tackle and Village Trading Post celebrates Grand Opening in Sioux Lookout

Tim Brody - Editor

Clark’s Bait and Tackle and Village Trading Post was buzzing with activity on Feb. 24 as a steady stream of visitors dropped by the store during the day to celebrate the business’s Grand Opening on Highway 72 in Sioux Lookout.
“We’re very excited to be here,” said Wayne Clark, who co-owns the business with wife Karla Clark. 
“We have four other locations, we have one in Vermilion Bay at the corner of 105, we have one at the lights at Howey Street in Red Lake, we have a gas bar in Balmertown, where we also have bait and tackle, and we have the location in Dryden right at the overpass on Highway 17,” he shared.
He said of adding the location in Sioux Lookout to his group of businesses, “I have to give a lot of credit to your economic development officer, she was just great in contacting us and kept on pursuing us to come and have a meeting here… she started the ball rolling and invited us here and lined up a realtor at the same time, so things happened pretty quick once we made our first visit here.”
“What got our attention here was this has been an ongoing bait and tackle, gift location for probably 40 years, this particular spot, although it’s been shut down for a couple of years, it’s still well-known with the tourists and locals as a bait shop. It’s all about location. It just fell into place. I don’t think we would have found another location like this and it’s right on the water too, it’s a perfect location, that’s why we’re here,” Clark said.
Clark said live bait has been the focus of the family run business for years.  “We’ve been in that business for, my dad started in the 50s, so we’ve been in that business for a long time, almost 75 years now, so that’s our main focus is live bait, providing quality live bait to the area. We also have the gift shop which is all Canadian artists. Most of these people just operate out of their homes. With our store we give them a storefront to promote their product and it’s working out really good,” Clark said.
The business features the work of over 40 local makers from Thunder Bay to Manitoba plus lots of others from across Canada. 
“We’ve been in the tackle business for many years, so we kind of have that dialed into people’s needs. We keep a nice range of tackle for the winter ice fishing, and we’ll swap that out for the summer season. We also carry marine accessories, boat seats with the hardware to mount them, we carry paddles and marine rope and anything the boater would require,” Clark added.
The store opened on Thursday afternoon and Clark said it has been busy since.
“We got in touch with the lady that runs the fishing derby over in Lac Seul. She put it on her Facebook, and we donated some prizes to them right away for their fish derby. She was very nice and sent a lot of people over here to get their minnows. We started off with a bang yesterday, more than we expected… Fantastic start. We’re very, very pleased and very thankful to the people of Sioux Lookout for supporting us so far. It’s been overwhelming so far, it’s been great,” Clark shared.
“We’re a family run business. My daughter Meagan works for us full time and our son-in-law Zack. My dad helps out a lot. He’s 92 years old now and he’s still going strong. He does the wood turning work that we sell, Ninety Rings, which is very popular in all our stores,” Clark added.
In addition to their stores, Clark’s Resorts & Outposts includes over 25 fly-in outposts.