151 Clay Groves | Breaking Through the Ice. Literally and Figuratively

Clay Groves is host of the Fish Nerds Fishing podcast, an ice fishing guide, and a grant writer based out of New Hampshire. Although he and co-founder Dave Kellum started the podcast in 2013, they first started Fish Nerds in 2011 as a writing project with the hope of publishing a book about catching and eating every fresh water fish in New Hampshire. Even though the book project never materialized, it did grow into the Fish Nerds Fishing podcast and with over 170 episodes under his belt, Clay has found a very specific and niche topic that has proven to catch his audience’s attention. 03:58 - The backstory behind the Fish Nerds and the Fish Nerds Fishing podcast 07:35 - MAPCON: Clay’s first experience with a podcasting conference 08:51 - Clay’s background in education and his opinion on conferences in the education space and how MAPCON compares to them 10:05 - What he thinks about the podcast community at MAPCON 11:25 - Road trip adventures with Podcast Junkies episode 136 guest, Amanda Doughty 12:05 - How he met Amanda and their collaborations 13:01 - Making friends through podcasting 13:33 - How using Patreon has greatly helped him with podcasting 17:48 - How to get the most out of a service like Patreon 22:33 - Advertising his ice fishing guide business on his podcast 22:51 - Some of the challenges of podcasting while ice fishing 24:28 - What people are mostly surprised about with ice fishing 26:07 - The sustainability behind ice fishing 27:09 - How thick the ice has to be for ice fishing, snowmobiles, trucks, and airplanes 29:51 - How he feels about getting paid for ice fishing and what he’s doing to grow his business 32:39 - Clay shares one of his most memorable fishing stories 37:34 - People’s natural tendency to help others who are in a bad situation 40:03 - How he got into teaching 41:56 - How he almost had a career in the music industry and when Nirvana stunk 44:51 - The How to Play Guitar with Clay podcast - good or bad idea? 46:18 - Why he likes trying new stuff and the different things he’s done 49:11 - His daughter’s acting endeavors 52:36 - Allowing your children the freedom to explore different interests 54:58 - What he’s changed his mind about recently 58:11 - The one most misunderstood thing about him 01:01:01 - Clay talks about the time he first heard about me and Podcast Junkies Full Show Notes: http://podcastjunkies.com/clay-groves-interview