DULUTH, Minn. _ On a frosty winter morning, wood smoke wafted from the workshop outside Geoff Vukelich's home north of Duluth, just up the road from the Rice Lake dam.
What seems odd, however, is that he has a wood stove at all. Vukelich has such a love affair with wood that it's hard to see him parting with any piece to burn.
"Yes, I have saved pieces (of firewood) over the years that talked to me," he admitted.
Vukelich, 37, grew up here on the family homestead, and still lives next door to his parents with his wife, Katie, and two rescue dogs, Brie and Milo.
For his day job, he's a supervisor in the City of Duluth's Street Maintenance Department. But he's been building his own fishing rods, landing nets, canoe paddles, snowshoes and other outdoor gear for two decades. About 10 years ago he started selling some of his handmade gear. Gradually that business has grown, all by word of mouth, all custom work.
He calls it Dam Goods and Gear. You might call it functional art.
"I'm kind of at a disadvantage because people want to see examples of my work and I really don't have any. I build them one at a time, specifically for each customer, and then they're out the door," Vukelich said, conceding that "it's not a very good business model to never have any stock on hand for people to look at or buy."
But it's a model that Vukelich is sticking with. It's more of a life philosophy.
"My definition of true custom work is that the customer is part of the build from the start," he said. He wants to know how and where you fish, what you fish for and what makes you happy on the water.
"I realize that not everyone is willing to be that involved (when buying outdoor gear). It's a niche of a niche," he said of his business. "Our goal is that it's more than a paddle, more than a rod. It sounds pie-in-the-sky, but it's what I do."
He doesn't sell his gear in any stores. You can see one of his paddles on the wall at the Bent Paddle brewery taproom in Lincoln Park "but that's as far down that road as I want to go," Vukelich said of having his gear stuck on the wall as art. (Other than that, you'll have to go to damgoodsandgear.com to see his work.)
One of Dam Goods' customers is Mike Sertich, the former UMD and Michigan Tech men's hockey coach and an avid fisherman. Sertich and Vukelich met when both tended bar at a supper club on Fish Lake. The two connected immediately and have remained friends, confidants and fishing partners. Sertich helped Vueklich straighten out some kinks in his once-wayward young adulthood. Vukelich helped Sertich portage into premier, hard-to-access fishing lakes.
"He's one of those people who, even though he's young, seems like he was around before. He's wise beyond his years... Geoff's in his 30s and I'm in my 70s and we get along like we went to school together," Sertich said. "He's a free spirit. Very creative. Very smart ... He's very ecologically aware, environmentally aware, and very much conservationist. He really respects nature."
Sertich said he is very fussy about his fishing rods. Most of the ones he uses were custom-built by Elsie Kueten at Jim's Bait in Duluth back in the 1970s.
"But the rod Geoff made for me, it's a live bait rig, is very good. It's beautiful and it works," Sertich said. "If you ask him to make it one way, that's the way it is... For me it was a fast tip, no reel seat, just a cork handle, Fuji guides... it's truly custom-made for me."
