​​In an effort to honor his grandfather’s legacy and fond memories of summers spent fishing, Trollgadda Owner Jeff Wanat puts his heart and soul into every thoughtfully-crafted fishing lure he makes in his Mars Hill wood shop.

Originally from the Chicago area, Wanat, along with his grandfather and other family members, would share a week every summer in Canada. This was a time for the family to get away from the city, immerse themselves in nature, and go fishing. 

After relocating to Western North Carolina in the early 2010s, Wanat worked in the craft beer industry, and the company took some employees on a fly fishing trip. This trip reignited his passion for fishing, and when the pandemic occurred, he realized he felt burned out in his work and was ready for a change. Desiring a creative outlet and the ability to work with his hands, Wanat decided to let his passion for fishing guide his next steps.

“Fishing is a religious experience for me,” Wanat said. “It’s a place where I can be outside and enjoy the feeling of being in the moment, and remember my grandfather. I knew if I couldn’t be out fishing every day, I could make this my business. I want others to be able to have the same types of experiences.”

Wanat created a business called Trollgadda — a nod to his love of storytelling, heritage, and connection. Trollgadda is a mythical pike from an old Swedish story. These pike would grow so big they would begin growing trees out of their heads and eat goats and cattle from the shore.

“I thought these stories were really cool,” Wanat said. “They are the timeless ‘big fish’ stories, and even just the wood tells a story. Using wooden lures to tell the stories of ourselves and what we’re doing and what our grandfathers did with being in nature, I thought this was a good storytelling opportunity with that.”

His grandfather had passed along fishing lures from the 1930s and 1940s; handmade wooden lures which are a far cry from the plastic single-use lures used by many of today’s anglers. Knowing this is a rarity, Wanat began crafting lures with an intention of sharing pieces of quality and value; lures that can be passed down from generation to generation as an heirloom, and that allow people to sense the workmanship in the craft.

Wanat performs each step in the process himself, and produces lures in very small batches. He begins with a ten-foot board, cutting it down into small pieces. He turns each piece on a lathe, then sands, seals, and balances each lure. Other materials in his lures are environmentally-conscious, as he uses no lead but tungsten or stainless steel. His raw materials are sourced from the US, using glass eyes on the wooden bodies, and using zero plastic in his products or his packaging.

“I want people to be able to pass down these lures,” Wanat said. “It’s important for them to be able to stand the test of time. There are 100-year-old lures out there that people are still using and enjoying. This speaks not only to the quality, but to investing in the community. There are cheaper ways of doing things, but that doesn’t mean that they’re better. These are important parts of my values, and you can see that in the products I’m putting out.”

Predominantly sold online, Wanat sometimes participates in local makers markets, and has attended fishing shows around the Southeast to sell his lures. In the few years he has been producing them, his lures have been purchased by anglers from WNC to Alaska, California, and Canada.

With the majority of Trogadda’s current lures designed for freshwater predator species, Wanat has plenty of opportunities to test his lures in WNC’s river and lake systems. He’s able to ensure the angles, buoyancy, and lipping are all correct and able to provide the action to be functional and get the ideal response from the species for which the lure was designed. He does have a goal of expanding into a larger variety of species-specific lures as long as he can maintain the quality of each piece produced.

“That’s the other beauty of each lure being handmade,” Wanat said. “These fish see a million cheap plastic things from overseas every day, then they see something that doesn’t act quite the same way. If you show the fish something that behaves a bit differently, well, I think the proof is in the pictures of the fish that have been caught with these lures.”