Fox River institution Freeman's Sports to close after 50 years

Freeman's Sports, the bait and tackle shop that has been an institution along the Fox River in downtown Yorkville for 50 years, is closing as of Oct. 1, its owners have announced.

Greg Freeman, who runs the shop with his 76-year-old mother, Bonnie, said it was just time to get out of the business. He said Southbank Original Barbecue, which takes up most of the former bait shop space, is successful; Freeman's family will continue to own the property after the bait shop business closes.

"I'm just getting tired of working seven days a week," Freeman said. "I got rid of (renting out) canoes last year. Southbank is doing good so I thought, you know, good time to do it."

Freeman said the business started when he and his brother began selling night crawlers, cucumbers and tomatoes in their family's front yard on Cannonball Trail. The brothers were four and five years old, respectively, at the time.

"That was the main route to Caterpillar, going back and forth," he said. "We got to selling so many of them, then dad decided he wanted to get a few canoes and maybe try to rent a few canoes. And it grew from there. So we had to move into town, before the neighbors started complaining about it."

The family moved the business two a couple locations along the river in downtown Yorkville until they bought their existing building at 129 E. Hydraulic Ave. in the late 1970s.

Bonnie Freeman was the driving force behind the business, Greg Freeman said.

"Mom was the one here all the time," he said. "Mom took care of the customers, mom did everything. She pretty much is what's held the place together all this time. From that, she's got more boys than she knows what to do with. Everybody calls her mom."

Freeman said the internet killed much of his business in recent years. Instead of buying tackle at his shop, customers buy it online for a fraction of the cost. Same with rods and reels, he said.

"My tackle sales are down 80 percent from what they were five years ago," he said. "There was a time where I had the whole building and I had aisles the length of the wall, with just one particular brand of tackle. I had an aisle where it was all Rapalas, the other side of the aisle was nothing but Mepps. And I sold it. And rods and reels, I sold a lot of those. But now I sell very few."

He continued, "First of all we had to fight the Walmarts, and all them things, and there's no sense in fighting it, you just roll with it. Then the internet comes along and you gotta fight them, but you can't fight 'em. So you usually roll along, but now there's nothing left to roll along into."

Freeman also said people don't seem to be as interested in fishing as they used to be. He said the changes to the Glen D. Palmer dam into the Marge Cline Whitewater Course discouraged families from fishing on the river. He said the city "did all they could to stop the fishing down at the dam."

"Not near as many people come out here to fish anymore," he said. "It is what it is."

Freeman has criticized city officials in the past, especially when the city leased space to a kayak shop not far from his canoe rental business.

Freeman said he'd like to get some time to himself after closing the shop.

"I haven't had a Saturday and Sunday off, together, in probably 40 years," he said. "And I've never been on vacation, not in my adult life."

Freeman's brother Dan died in 2006, and his father Phillip in the same year.

"You get to thinking, you better do something before you can't," he said.

Freeman said that while the shop is officially closing, his family will continue to own the building, and he will continue to operate a workshop in the basement, where he fixes and custom builds fishing rods.

Freeman said Bonnie is also going to keep busy.

"Mom will not retire until we're not here," he said. "I hope she feels she can go wherever she wants whenever she wants. She don't have to be here. She deserves it, whether she realizes it or not."

He said a group of guys sits down on the porch and has coffee, and that won't change.

"We'll still be out here sitting on the porch," he said. "We got guys that come by on Saturdays and Sundays and they drink coffee and they sit down. They don't buy nothing, they just come in and b.s. So, we'll still have our 'church' out on the front porch."