GLEN ELDER RESERVOIR, Kan. — It was well past midnight and Jeff Rader was still working hard.
For three hours, he’d kept his boat over schools of fish that should have been feeding on the baitfish attracted to lights hung over the side. But bites were few.
“We can stay here as long as you like, or we can give it a few more minutes and head in,” Rader said. “I can pick you up at 6 tomorrow, that’ll give you three extra hours of fishing before we try this again.”
Fifteen minutes later, the boat was headed towards shore, clients laughing at Rader’s stories and one-liners.
“I’ve always thought it important to be really adaptable, to have a willingness to keep trying and change,” Rader said of making it 30 years as a hunting and fishing guide. “I’ve always tried to give everything to the customer, what ever it takes, to keep them happy.”
In 1986, Rader left the security of a railroad job in Nebraska to move to north-central Kansas.
“I came down and visited the lake and just fell in love with it,” Rader said. “Back then it had really good fishing.”
So just north of the lake, Rader built a one-level, motel-style lodge. Within the building were living quarters for his family of a pregnant wife and three small children. The original plan was to run a motel with a convenience store that sold fried chicken.
“The first three years, my kids smelled like chicken when they went to school and other kids made fun of them,” Rader said. “Even the money we took the bank smelled like chicken.”
Glen Elder was such a hot fishery in those days that it was pretty easy to keep guided anglers happy. Challenges soon came.
“One of the biggies was the floods of ’93 when the lake was 33 feet high. There was just enough of the marina building showing for the sea gulls to rest on,” said Rader, who has stories of floating over bridges normally dozens of feet above the water to go fishing. “Sometimes I’d pick mulberries out of the tops of (flooded) trees before I picked up my fishermen. It was high, but we caught fish every day.”
Harder times came about 10 years later, when consecutive years of heavy drought had the lake so low that most fish didn’t have good spawns for several years. The lake’s white bass population, upon which Rader had built a steady clientele, seemed almost non-existent. Walleye, stripers and crappie were the same.
“About all we had was catfish, so we learned to rely on them,” said Rader, who scoured the countryside looking for rancid grain so he could dump 55-gallon barrels of chum to concentrate fish for anglers during the heat of the summer.
He guided on wild pheasant and waterfowl hunts for many years, which might have him putting out decoys or making blinds at three hours before sunrise or scrambling to find fields with plenty of birds. Poor pheasant hatches and inconsistent duck flights were always a challenge.
Mother Nature hasn’t been his only challenge. A fall from a roof once shattered his heals and broke his ankles. That meant a lot of time in a wheelchair. The injuries bother him more and more as he ages. In November 2007, hours before 60 hunters were to arrive to hunt pheasants, an electrical problem burned his lodge to the ground.
“I called around and found beds for 50 of the hunters,” Rader said. “We also had to line up places to eat and how to get the hunters around. We did it; we had to take care of the customers.”
All four children all roped into service, often at young ages, doing everything from cleaning rooms to guiding clients and cleaning fish and game. It was never his goal for them to make the lodge their careers. He insisted all to go to college or some other form of education.
“I’m glad none of them are still here,” Rader said. “But growing up here, I think, was really good for them. All four kids are doing well and know what it’s like to have to work hard for success. They gained a really good work ethic.”
Rader’s work ethic is still strong, though his business has evolved through time. He now releases pheasants for his hunters, and uses a controlled shooting area license to expand hunting seasons. His lodge is full with guided deer hunters much of the fall and winter. Turkey hunters arrive in April and May. The deer and turkey hunts have enough financial rewards to take a lot of pressure off Rader through the summer. He also spends less time afield in the fall and spring, and more time cooking and handling logistics.
Still, he guides anglers, like the four he took white bass fishing under lights recently. Two, Oklahomans Jim and Pat Morgan, have fished with him for most of those 30 years. The following day, with three hours of trolling before three hours fishing under the lights, they helped boat about 45 white bass. Still, they didn’t consider the previous night’s half-dozen fish a failure.
“When we come up here we’re coming up to have fun, and you always do when you’re fishing with Jeff,” said Jim Morgan at 1 a.m., while Rader was off cleaning the few fish. “We’ve never failed to have a good time, even if the fish aren’t biting.”
