Steve Ruzic admits, "I fish every chance I get."
Although he likes to catch all kinds of fish, this rural Neosho resident really prefers trout fishing.
Perhaps that is because he was raised in Montana where, as just a youngster, he learned to fish for trout. Ruzic's dad was a fisherman who instilled a love of the sport in his son. "Some of the best memories I have of my dad are when we were fishing," Ruzic recalls.
And although, he lost his dad when he was sixteen, Ruzic never lost his love of catching a trout.
After high school, Ruzic earned a degree as a fisheries biologist at Missouri State University in Springfield, MO. After college he took a job managing a catfish farm near Greenville, Mississippi.
By this time he had a wife and son, and the catfish farm job required him to spend many hours away from his family. So, he switched professions and became a pharmaceutical salesman.
Now he is changing jobs and wants to return to what he truly loves and what he was trained to do—raise and care for fish.
Through all these years of being a husband, father and salesman, he continued to fish and teach his own three boys to be fishermen and good sportsmen. He has deep thoughts about fishing and the rewards it gives.
"God teaches lots of lessons on the bank of a river," he said.
Ruzic still goes back west, to the land of his birth, and catches trout. In fact, the rainbow trout he furnished for the wild game feed at the Racine Christian Church in February came from the mountains near Leadville, Colorado. To these rainbows, he also added some bass that were caught in local farm ponds.
In his fishing life, Ruzic has caught five species of trout: rainbow, brown, golden, brook, and cutthroat. Some places he fished as a kid had lake trout. He and his dad caught some of them, of course, so that puts the actual number of species to six.
Like most fishermen, Ruzic has a fishing dream. He caught a shark once, but his dream is to catch a large great white shark on a rod and reel. He smiled just thinking about this adventuresome dream.
Locally, he and his family go to Roaring River and catch a few trout. It may not be Montana, but it is a nice place to fish for trout.
No matter where you put in your hook, Ruzic says that fishing has a value, both physical and mental. And, as he said, Steve Ruzic likes to fish "every chance I get."
