Crappie.com, part 1

Part 1 of a 2 part series

How did a self-professed computer geek, born in Chicago, Illinois, who cut his eye teeth hunting and fishing in Michigan and who got college degrees from George Washington University, Dominican University and Elmhurst College, end up as the king of the on-line crappie kingdom?

It’s as interesting a story as you’ll ever hear. And I’m glad to share it here. Ed Moes loves crappie fishing. And his love for crappie fishing has brought anglers from around the nation to one spot. His devotion to the sport led him to start a site in 1996 called Crappie.com.  Over the years it has survived a slow start, server issues and spam attacks to become a site with millions of hits a month today. There are 30,000 people a across the country signed up as members.

Mr. Crappie.com, Ed Moes

The coolest part is that it draws crappie fishermen to share fishing information, stories, photos and fun in a family-friendly forum that’s just plain awesome. In addition, Crappie.com followers have special events in almost every state where members who meet on line get together for fishing and fish fries and fishing stories.

“I’ve got to say, Crappie.com has it’s own life,” Ed said in a recent conversation. “It is it’s own phenomenon, an outgrowth of the friendly nature crappie fishing brings about. Crappie fishing is more about friends and family than cut throat competition and that is directly reflected on crappie.com and the nature of it’s membership.”

Ed bought the domain name in 1996,  when the Internet really started to get rolling. Around a year later, he put up a crude message board on the site.  It received a few posts here and there, but then fishing guide Richard Williams started posting his fishing reports there and it started to take off.  Other fishermen and other guides started posting reports and it took off even more. It has pretty much doubled in size every year since it originally started.

If you want to find out more about Crappie.com and how to “join”, just go to the site, look in the upper right hand side of the home page and click on the “register” button. Fill out the form and you’ll receive an email and access to the site. It includes all kinds of information and forums for various states where you can keep in touch with other fishermen and the latest reports.

Part 2 tomorrow: More about Ed & Crappie.com