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Hello, I guess I'm doing my first post as a little introduction. I hope this is the correct procedure, as I have never been part of any kind of forum like this before. Dieter, who I think is a well known member here came across a video I made on you tube, and in his comment he made mention of tackleunderground, so here I am. My name is Ryan, I grew up in Minnesota, but live in Wisconsin now. I live on the peninsula between Lake Michigan and the bay of Green Bay, near the town of Sturgeon Bay. I made my first lure in November of 2010, so almost exactly three years ago. I started making lures as sort of a search to connect with my Dads family history. My father passed away 19 years ago just as I was becoming a young adult, so I never had a grown up relationship with him. So I guess I started doing some family tree research. My dad was an only child, but I knew of his father whom I met once when I was 4. My dads dad was Harley, who died when I was about 6. Harley's dad was a man by the name of Ray Thompson. I knew from stories told to me by my god-father(my dad's best friend) that my great-grandfather was a semi-famous artist/wood worker from northern Minnesota, specifically the Park Rapids area. Ray made fish decoys, lures, knife handles, fishing rods, fish wall carvings, gunstock carving and probably more that I don't know about. I found out a lot of this online and some from talking to "old-timers" from Park Rapids, Mn. I found an article in a Decoy magazine back issue entirely about my great-grandfather, Ray Thompson. The article was written by Donna Tonnelli. I then found out Donna was an author of a book called, "Top of the Line Fishing Collectables", which features some of my great-grandfathers work. When I was a very young boy I remember a large ornate box in our basement with old fishing poles, tools and lures enclosed, but It disappeared. Turned out, my dad sold it to a collector around 1980. I came to find out, that collector is Joe Tonnelli, the husband of the author Donna Tonnelli. I was on a mission to acquire some of Rays artwork, but as it turns out, his stuff is very rare and expensive in the fishing collector world. One of his hand carved and painted decoys set a world record in 2008 at one of those fancy auctions. The decoy sold for just under $15,000. I found other people who have some of his work, but it seems no one is very willing to part with Ray Thompson items from their collection for any price that I can afford.....so I started making my own stuff. I posted pictures of my first 40 lures. From the beginning I signed them. first one RT1, second RT2 and so on. I'm up to RT61, but I have several unfinished, so they are not numbered yet. Well, that may have been a bit overboard of an introduction, but I like the story, I hope you do too. I'd like to say thank you to the originators of this website, and all the people who run it, and all the members who take their time and efforts to share with others like you and me. Thank you again, and Hello to all. Ryan Thompson