Jeff Strane:

I was born on Miami Beach with sand in my shorts and saltwater on my face. My family moved to Montgomery, Alabama a year later where I lived (fished) for the next 22 years. My passion, some say “illness”, started at age 2 on the lakes, rivers, creeks and ponds of Alabama chasing anything that would bite. My father, grandfather and uncles all suffered from the same dreaded disease. After moving to Florida my illness became much much worse and I was officially diagnosed as………uncurable. Over the next 20 plus years, I spent, invested and many times wasted (according to others) thousands of hours fishing for anything that would bite….Grouper, Snapper, Kingfish, Warsaw, Bass, Drum, Snook, Pinfish, Grunts, Gar………………. Still today, I can’t sleep the night before a big offshore trip………it’s like being 5 years old on Christmas eve. One night while I should have been sleeping I was tying up 50 Snapper and Grouper leaders for a big offshore trip, My fingers were sore and I got really tired of cutting my fingers on the leaders while tying and cinching knots. I went to the garage and found a short piece of flat stainless, a bench grinder and a roll of electrical tape (see not everybody from Alabama uses duct tape) and made my first knot cinching tool. That’s how this whole mess started. My son and daughter have caught the bug too and we go fishing every chance we get. My son AJ (Andrew Jeffrey Jr.) is still upset with me and thinks he’s named after an Amberjack (AJ).