Marine General Owner Inducted into Minnesota Fishing Hall of Fame

DULUTH, Minn. – The founder and longtime owner of Marine General, Russ Francisco has been inducted into the Minnesota Fishing Hall of Fame.

As a young lad, Francisco found his love for the field working in a marina. After it closed in 1976, he opened Marine General.
47 years later he’s still running the shop on London Road in Duluth, specializing in Lake Superior hard and soft water gear.

“It hasn’t really all settled in yet, you know you really don’t expect it right? You just go to work every day, you work hard, and do what you’re supposed to do and so it’s nice to hear. The nice thing has been all the people calling. I have customers that are really getting to be older, 80’s, late 80’s, and early 90’s, they’ve been calling, they don’t come much anymore but they’ve been calling and saying they’ve seen it and these people that are customers 40 years ago,” Marine General Owner, Russ Francisco says.

After 47 years in the fishing business, this is what Francisco had to give for advice to anyone hitting the lakes.

“The advice I have for everybody is get out on the ice with a chisel and test it first before, you know just because it’s cold out doesn’t mean the ice is safe. So, test it out really good. Other than that fishing isn’t too bad, I mean the people who can get out, there’s a lot of lakes that didn’t get slush and if you can find those lakes around the area and those that get a solid curst on top, you can probably do pretty good fishing right now,” Francisco says.

Francisco went on to say his success is a group effort and is thankful for the customers that keep coming back.