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).

Nick Bogdanos

Nick Bogdanos grew up in Montreal, Canada and moved to Detroit Michigan in 1977, where he joined Allmand Industries, a prototype tooling and plastic injection molding company. In 1990, Nick was promoted to President, and the company consistently grew to become full service which included design, mold building and manufacturing. Allmand Industries was Volvo Heavy Truck’s largest plastic injection molder.

In 2001, Nick accepted a position with Andover Plastics as President and COO in charge of a multi-site $100 mil company which produced high volume decorated plastic components for the automotive industry. For the last two years he has been consulting and advising manufacturing companies in operational matters. In early 2008, Nick joined Team Marine USA and turned his efforts towards the fishing and marine industry to help produce and market a high quality, proprietary line of products that was developed by Jeff Strane. Jeff and Nick have known each other and worked together for close to 20 years.