Company: Canal Bait
Owner: John F. Rancourt
Location: 216 Smith St., Providence
Type of business: Full line of fresh and saltwater bait and tackle, custom rods
Year founded: 1946 (approximately)
Annual revenues: WND
WITH A MODEL of the original Canal Street Bait Shop is the current owner John F. Rancourt in his Smith Street location.
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Last April, a six-year-old girl named Samantha caught a seven-pound trout in the pond at Slater Park in Pawtucket.
John Rancourt has a picture of her — and others like her — in his “Kids’ First Fish” photo album. Some of the children need help holding up their catch, others – still a bit squeamish – are shown holding a fish carefully wrapped in a towel.
The album is one of Rancourt’s prized possessions. He keeps it tucked behind the counter at Canal Bait, a business he bought five years ago after retiring from the Providence Fire Department.
”These days, we’ve got six, seven and eight-year-old kids catching five-pound trout,” said Rancourt. “You never saw that before.”
A Providence native, Rancourt has fished all his life – on Narragansett Bay, at Lincoln Woods, Twin Rivers, Geneva Pond and other places. The thought of small children reeling in big fish brings a smile to his face. They are, after all, the next generation. And they are keeping something he loves alive.
”When the store is crowded and some children come walking in, I tell everyone to move aside,” he said. “Sometimes they come in with 20 cents. All they want is a couple of hooks and a sinker. And I know they’re out there like I was – with some twining wrapped around their wrist. But they’re catching fish.”
Recreational fishing in Rhode Island, be it as a hobby or a business – is as healthy as it has been in years, Rancourt said. People don’t ice fish like they used to, because there simply isn’t enough ice, he said. But they are finding their way to the rivers and ponds scattered throughout Rhode Island.
Rancourt credits the state Department of Environmental Management with doing a “phenomenal job” of stocking Rhode Islands ponds – from Ashville Pond in Hopkinton to Round Top Pond in Burrillville to St. Mary’s Pond in Portsmouth. DEM operates five trout hatcheries throughout the state and they have been an enormous success, Rancourt said.
”In Rhode Island, we have larger and healthier trout being put in our rivers than there are in Colorado and Washington, and all over the Northwest,” Rancourt asserted.
That’s good for business at Canal Bait, which operates six days a week, year-round. It is a business with a long history in the city. Pop Edwards brought the store to the corner of Smith and Canal Streets after Hurricane Carol took a toll on it and other businesses around Charles and Corliss Streets.
The bait and tackle business arrived on Smith Hill in 1974.
There have been ownership changes along the way. Rancourt has been its steady hand for the last five years. The business virtually fell into his lap. Nearing retirement, Rancourt was looking for something to do.
The bait shop’s owner at the time called him out of the blue one day and asked Rancourt if he wanted to buy the business he had visited so often. Within a few months, the deal was complete.
Rancourt has taught himself to build custom rods, having invested about $1,000 for the equipment to do so properly. He sells a full line of rods and reels. There are filet knives and a wide variety of lures. Wholesalers deliver bait that includes green crab, sea worms, trout worms, night crawlers, squid strips, fresh water shiners and clam bellies.
The customers are as varied as the bait. Rancourt said the influx of Asians in Providence during the past decade has been a boom for business. There are the loyal regulars who have been fishing for decades. But there are also husbands and wives – fathers and daughters.
“I think that’s great,” Rancourt said.
What hasn’t changed, he said, is the fact that people universally find fishing a relaxing hobby – a chance to slow down, to reflect. For some it remains a daily or weekly ritual, for others it is a once-a-year event, but no less significant.
“Rhode Island’s ‘Opening Day’ is always the second Saturday in Aprilit’s like there is a Super Bowl-type hype,” Rancourt said. “I’m open 24 hours a day, starting the morning before. There are people here at 1 a.m. Maybe 10 or 15 percent of them don’t fish again all year. But they love camping out the night before.”
Rancourt is bullish on fishing’s future. He and other bait shop owners, he said, donate bait and equipment for children’s fishing tournaments throughout the year.
Rancourt knows of several fishermen who take groups of students or scouts out for a day on the water – teaching them the ins and outs of fishing. Those children often find their way to Canal Bait, for a couple of hooks and a sinker. And maybe they come back with a photo for Rancourt’s album.
One of Rancourt’s colleagues has a bumper sticker. It says; “Take a kid fishing.”
“I firmly believe in that,” he said.
