ITEM PHOTO BY OWEN O’ROURKE
Laura Ippoliti, owner of the recently closed Ippi’s Bait & Tackle Shop in Lynn, plans to paint over the shop’s logo on her pickup truck soon.
BY THOR JOURGENSEN
LYNN — Laura Ippoliti still plans to cast a fishing line into Sluice Pond, but her days of selling rods and reels on Parkland Avenue have ended with the closing of Ippi’s Bait and Tackle.
Ippoliti operated the store on the edge of Wyoma Square since 2004. But she said competition from large retailers, the economic downturn and spikes in fuel prices drove her out of business.
“All my guys sold their boats,” she said.
A Franklin native, Ippoliti grew up fishing for bass and hornpout catfish with her siblings on ponds in southern Massachusetts. She worked 16 years as a traveling saleswoman for an industrial instrument maker before she grew weary of flying and took a job at a Peabody firm.
Her love for fishing helped start her own business and she branched out of Ippi’s by launching and helping to sponsor local fishing derbies, including the Lynn Fish and Game derby annually held on the last Saturday in April.
The contest is held on Sluice Pond and Ippoliti has also helped host Flax Pond derbies as a way to get children outside and entice them into briefly trading smart phones for fishing rods.
“It gets them off the couch,” she said.
Ippoliti has also helped improve Wyoma Square, said First Lutheran Church Rev. Jonathan Niketh, who noted that Ippoliti is a constant presence at the square’s annual July festival.
“She really wanted to be a positive neighborhood contributor,” Niketh said. “She struck me as someone who is always positive and just a good neighbor.”
Ippoliti credited family and friends for supporting and encouraging her during the years she operated Ippi’s. She said her wife, Dr. Nancy Balch, “kept my dream alive for so long.” She misses her customers and said equipment purchased at Ippi’s help catch some big fish, including a 76-pound cod.
“It was bigger than me,” she said.
She will be involved in local fishing derbies and looks forward to fishing in the Sluice Pond derby. She will also continue working with saltwater fishing boat owners to resist federal regulations she said are steadily shrinking ocean fishing grounds.
The passenger door on her pickup truck door reads, “Ippi’s Bait and Tackle,” but Ippoliti plans to paint over the logo soon.
“It’s sad to look at,” she said.
Thor Jourgensen can be reached at [email protected].