Duluth, Minn. ? Yes, the hours are bad. Yes, he’s on the road a lot. Sure, he isn’t getting rich.

But Craig Keuten loves the bait business.

“It’s in my blood,” he says. “I’ve been around it all my life.”

Keuten grew up following his dad, the late Jim Keuten, up creeks where he was seining minnows. Jim and Elsie Keuten operated Jim’s Bait, a renowned Duluth bait and tackle shop, for 50 years. Craig was always close to the action, and when his dad died 12 years ago, Craig took over the wholesale end of the operation.

He drives a truck, delivering minnows and night crawlers and leeches to bait dealers from Duluth to Grand Marais to Cook to Brainerd to Sturgeon Lake.

“When the season really gets cranking, I’m pretty much on the road all the time,” Keuten says. “It’s pretty much 24/7. I’ve been delivering on the opener at 1 or 2 in the morning.”

If he isn’t delivering bait, he’s picking it up from suppliers.

Leeches come from the White Earth Indian Reservation. Night crawlers come by truck from Toronto. Minnows come from all over Minnesota.

“The backbone of the business is the chub and crappie minnows,” Keuten says.

The most difficult part of the business, Keuten says, is the shortages. Sometimes the people who raise or trap minnows can’t get enough to satisfy Minnesota’s anglers.

Currently, there’s a sucker minnow shortage.

“The last two weeks of the (winter) season, I couldn’t buy a sucker in the state of Minnesota,” he says.

Suckers are raised rather than trapped. Low water caused by drought conditions made for tough conditions in last summer’s heat.

“A lot of the ponds more or less boiled the fish that were in ’em,” Keuten says.

This spring and summer, anglers may not get all the sucker minnows they want.

“The last few years, they (shortages) have been getting worse and worse,” Keuten says. “This year is going to be something people have never seen in this industry.” Beyond shortages, the changing values of society are affecting the fishing industry Keuten says.

“Sales are down. We’re losing fishermen in this state,” he says. “A lot of the young kids would rather sit on their butts at home playing Nintendo. And (fishing) isn’t as family-oriented as it used to be. People used to sit on a bank and camp. Now, if it’s not a five-star room next to the water, they don’t want it.”