Meet Swimbait Artist Jen Kravassi

Nike and esteemed lure painter Jennifer Kravassi share a tag line: JUST DO IT! Jen is a risk taker, angler, a musician, veteran, former Vice Mayor and an exceptionally talented artist.

I met Jen at the Swimbait Universe Gathering and we instantly became friends. I found her so interesting and could not wait to find out more and share her story with our Half Past First Cast readers. Here she is, in her own words:

Jen Kravassi: My name is Jen Kravassi. I am a small business owner of a company called Jekyll Bait Company. It is a  lure painting company, and I am an industry Pro. I have been an airbrush painter for almost eight years now and I paint full time.

HPFC: How did you get the name Jekyll?

Jen Kravassi: : Jekyll, the first three letters are JEK, that's my initials, Jennifer Ellen Kravassi. “Jekyll” was a nickname they gave to me when I was fishing in a local bass nations club. I did some opens and competed locally in Southern Maryland Bassmaster. I kind of went into beast mode on the water as a co-angler, so they coined the name Jekyll. It kind of stuck. And it's been a part of me ever since. It's spelled Jekyll as in Jekyll and Hyde.

HPFC: You took a circuitous route to get where you are. Can you give me a brief overview?

Jen Kravassi: Out of high school, I became an Army medic in the United States Army Reserves. From there, I kind of stuck with the Army Corps of Engineers as an environmental consultant. I did everything from tagging sea turtles to right whale observation, to tagging sturgeon and doing different biological studies here and there. Fisheries background is basically where I began. I was also a touring musician. I've been an artist since I was a kid. My mom studied Fine Arts in college, so I kind of went with her to school. She was a single mom when I was growing up. After my school let out, we'd go to Harford Community College in Maryland, and I would sit in the back of the room. It was really neat for me watching her become an artist in various different forms of media. I really got that spark and I fell in love with color. I kind of bounced around because I've always been a “What haven't I done?” type of person. I spent 6 plus years with Walmart as an Asset Protection Manager, put myself through Interviewing and Interrogation school, and while I was there, I was also serving as a Vice Mayor in a small community in Maryland for about two and a half years. I kind of threw all of that to the side and decided that I really needed to work for myself, because at that point, no matter what I did just didn’t feel fulfilling. So I took my 401K, I cashed it out, quit my job, and I invested in myself. I have never looked back. It's been a roller coaster but it's one I WANTED to go on. If I had to do everything over again, 100% I would do it the exact same way. I made the right choice. I haven't given up on myself and I've never quit.

HPFC:  What was your angling background like before you got into painting lures?

Jen Kravassi: My first fish catch happened at age seven. My mom bought me a Styrofoam box of worms and a Zebco 202, as we had gone camping. One of the things that I really enjoyed about being with her is that she loved the outdoors, too. She liked to take us camping, she would take me and my cousin Christine, in Maryland and Pennsylvania, to the Susquehanna River. That’s where I grew up fishing. We had to go home, and I ran out of worms, but I really wanted to make that “last cast”, I had a piece of pink bubble gum in my mouth, I put it on the hook and I caught a yellow perch… and something CHANGED in my life at that point. I can vividly remember it. I can remember how the fish looked, how the bubble gum looked hanging out of its mouth and everything about that moment and it stuck with me. To this day, the only things in life that have really held my interest, kept my passion and calmed me down are the arts and fishing.

HPFC: How did you get into custom bait painting?

Jen Kravassi:I already knew how to paint a little bit and had been dabbling with watercolors, oils and acrylics. I decided that if I could do that, then I could figure out a way to bring the two things that I love the most in life together, which were arts and fishing. I cashed in my 401K, quit my day job and decided to invest in some airbrush paint and an airbrush. I was in a point in my life where I was very lucky to live in Jonesboro, Arkansas. I had no mortgage, the house I was living in was paid off. I was able to sustain a very tiny business for a little bit longer. I think the hardest thing about a small business is the financial aspect of it. You're constantly having to scrape and scrape and scrape knowing that you're probably not going to make any sort of profit for the first couple of years, sometimes much longer. You have to sustain that. You still have to survive for those periods of time. But I was a little bit lucky, in that I had a few less bills than some other folks may have. I just sat down in my garage seven days a week, 10 to 12 hour days, and I taught myself how to paint with an airbrush.

I started selling lures and started doing auctions online, on Facebook. There's a couple of buy/sell groups that I belong to. Even when I wasn't decent, I still wanted to put that out there because I knew that I had to do something to make income and I couldn't keep buying supplies and not make money. So I sold items inexpensively because I was still brand new. I still don't think to this day that I'm great, but I did make some money back then.

HPFC:  How did you go from your garage and end up with Bull Shad?

Jen Kravassi:I'd say three years or so had passed, and I was starting to become more proficient. I knew that in order to become relevant, I had to not just paint, but I had to figure out something different, something that not a ton of other people were doing. You would see fishing videos on YouTube, you would see a lot of different how-tos on how to bait your hook, how to throw a crankbait, how to swim this, how to do that. There weren't maybe but a handful, maybe five or six people that were teaching how to paint lures and I’ve always loved teaching. I figured, if I could find that niche and teach people the things that I learned, then I might be able to get a little bit more exposure. And that kind of snowballed into a full time YouTube channel. From the full time YouTube channel, I took that into all other aspects of social media.

Through Instagram, Mike Bucca (who I had known about for years -- everybody knows Bull Shad Swimbaits or at least a lot of anglers know Bull Shad Swimbaits if you're really immersed in the fishing community) reached out to me. I didn't realize that he was watching some of the things that I had done. He had also talked to the CEO at Catch Co. because he saw me painting Baby Bull Shads. The Baby Bull Shad had just dropped, time frame was 2019. I was custom painting them all the time because I also realized that the more expensive the bait, the more profitability it allowed the artist. If you're painting crankbaits for a living, you have to paint three to four times as many as you would a swimbait, because there's more real estate on a swimbait, which means there's more area to paint. Swimbait painting is a coveted niche that is still very organic, very grassroots and a specialty area. Bucca was messaging me, and sent me 30 or 40 regular sized Bull Shads size to paint. He said, “Hey, I've got this  swimbait show, it's called ‘Swimbait Universe Gathering’. It's going to be in Lanexa, Virginia. Would you paint me some baits?”

I said, “Sure, absolutely!”

At the time, my mom was still living in Norfolk, Virginia. As it coincided, I was headed out to visit her that week, so I replied “How about if I just dropped the baits off in person?”  and I ended up working the show with him. We had some great conversations that weekend, and I found myself in the middle of his old shop in Georgia. As he was showing me around, I asked him why I was there. He said “I would like know if you would possibly be interested in being a painter here at the shop with me. He shook his head and said, “That's probably the craziest idea ever, because you'd never move from Arkansas to Georgia.”

I replied “Well, what if I said yes?”

And the rest is kind of history. Maybe it's crazy. It sounds crazy. It sounds like something that's completely off base and mental. The stars and the planets lined up and he absolutely forbid me to work FOR him. To this day I'm not on his payroll. He not only wants to promote me as an artist with Bull Shad, but wants me to grow as a separate small business. He genuinely wanted to help me grow my brand. Mike and his wife, Dyana, are very avid about trying to do what they can for as many people as they can in this community. It's one of the most amazing things that I've ever seen. You don't get a lot of that in any industry anywhere.. So I thought it was pretty cool.

It's like lightning struck. In a good way.

HPFC: What have been the biggest lessons about painting, fishing and life along the way?

Jen Kravassi: Time management, being able to accept change at the drop of a hat. Don't give up on yourself, and you absolutely have to be ALL in every day. Even if you wake up and you just don't want to get out of bed. I've failed a lot of times, and you gotta be able to get back up. You have to have a higher power as well. You have to believe in something bigger than yourself. I know that probably sounds cliche, but that's the most evident truth that I know, to never quit, never stop grinding. And don’t ever forget to look UP!

Especially with today's social media and relevancy issues. You've got so much out there… TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Vimeo, there's like a million things out there. If you don't keep yourself relevant, you might as well be lost. Nobody’s going to do that for you.

Time management is key as far as life lessons. Those are probably the biggest ones. Just believe in yourself. Do everything you can to better yourself whether it's learning something new or getting better at something you already do.. I'm constantly feeling like everybody else in the industry is way, way better than me. I'm very competitive with myself.

HPFC: What's the difference between painting swimbaits versus conventional lures?

Jen Kravassi: There's a few. Most notably, I mentioned real estate. The paintable area is a lot bigger most times. One of the most important ones though, is that the swimbait community is extraordinarily picky about the patterns that they want on a bait so you have to be a good artist. I didn't even venture into the swimbait world until I was three and a half or four years in. I didn't want to half ass it. I didn't want to go into the swimbait community and say, “Hey, look at me. I can paint this, (or) here’s my knock off of somebody else’s bait”. I at least wanted to be a contender. Because they’re the type of people that will literally fish from sun-up to sundown, for that one or two huge bites. And that’s the swimbait community. It’s a whole different world.

The people you meet there are dedicated  to BIG bass and it’s completely different world. They're persistently creative. They're a lot of fun. They're great and most everybody's genuine. When I say finicky and picky about what they want on their bait, these guys are paying a lot of money for a product that they have to have confidence in to catch big fish. I say that with the most endearing motive here -- because they want what they need to catch the fish. They're paying a substantial amount of money to get that, so it needs to be top quality.

HPFC: You seem very talented with all the other arts: YouTube, photography and etc. How does that match with your painting?

Jen Kravassi: It's provided me the opportunity to go beyond just painting baits. I've learned video and am able to film and edit. I grew up as a young adult watching guys like Overstreet, for Bassmaster, all the Bassmaster, FLW and now MLF tournaments, and some of the most amazing content that would come out of that. And I'm like, man, that is so cool. You know, it's just a completely different type of photography than what my mom was studying when she was in college, when I was that little girl watching her develop black and white stuff in the darkroom. But this was like (you can't even say it's football or baseball), it's a different kind of action sport. It's something that was brand new. To watch guys like that, be able to hone their talents and craft it into a successful business and career for themselves, I'm like, “Why can't I do that?” Then with that you have to be able to do in modern careers, it all comes back to relevancy and having to be a jack of all trades. Almost imperative that you do that, as a small business person, you have to have the motivation to not just paint the bait, but explain why you've painted the bait and then paint 1000 more of those and then watch whichever tournaments are on, because you want to see what the water conditions are, what color won which tournament, you have to know what the hot baits are, and see if you can evolve the business that way. It's constant, constant work. To be able to have a little bit of creativity is definitely helpful. It's certainly helped move me along in my career.

HPFC: What's your favorite pattern to paint?

Jen Kravassi: That's changed over time. When I started painting, I would go to Bass Pro Shops or Cabela’s and look at the catalogs that come in the mail. I was fishing tournaments at the time so you would see the normal run of the mill, the Tennessee Shads and all the different stuff that's out there. It almost looks cookie cutter, maybe the color has changed a little bit. So when I was a young painter, I really wanted to do something that hadn't been seen before. I wanted to give customers a chance, maybe, to throw something that the fish hadn't seen before. So I was into wild styles, really bold colors. Now that I've matured a bit in my career, I want to paint the best match-the-hatch patterns that I can paint. Right now, currently, my favorite of all time to paint is trout because I love to go trout fishing. I'm an avid fly fisherman when I'm not working. Don’t worry, I throw swimbaits too.

HPFC: Which patterns give you the most trouble?

Jen Kravassi: (Jen laughs) I'm laughing because there's a story to this, there's always a story -- shad. It's funny because I work with Mike at “Bull Shad” and the name of the company is Bull SHAD, right? You’ve got to be able to paint shad. I always felt that there were so many gifted painters out there that were really good at shad that I never concentrated on them. I'm like, shoot, there's a million shad out there and there's a million shad painters out there, it's nothing more than a dot and a swath of color on the back of the fish right?! …until I started sitting down with Mike Bucca. I can't tell you the times that we've gone to various bait shops where he's asked the owners to scoop out the live shad so that we can photograph them, and he'll show me the different nuances, and so now I've kind of had to train and retrain myself into trying to figure out how to paint a good shad pattern, and it is not as easy as you would think. Shad, shad, SHAD! is my hardest.

HPFC: Which patterns do you think are most effective?

Jen Kravassi: Oh, wow, that's a loaded question. The ones that catch fish, but it goes back to knowledge of tournaments. I think it depends on where you are, the waters you are fishing, what are the conditions, what’s the time of year, I believe in all of that. I think that if I'm going to Florida, I'm going to want a shiner pattern and if I'm fishing in the Northeast I'm going to want to trout or a perch pattern. So I think that it all varies, which is why you have so many different anglers that have different confidence baits for different places.

HPFC: Yeah, I always thought that color was a bunch of bologna.

Jen Kravassi: Yeah, I know and you're not 100% wrong, even me being a painter and putting my entire career in jeopardy by agreeing with you. When a fish wants to eat, you can usually get that reaction bite. But when a fish doesn't want to eat, you have to make it think that it does. And you can't just do that with speed of a lure or the action of the lure. Sometimes it has to match what type of fish is in that water, conditions, COLOR.

HPFC: I finally realized that. Changing topics, fishing in general tends to be male dominated. Have you received any resistance within the community or the industry?

Jen Kravassi:It's hard to answer that question because maybe I'm unique, but it's been quite the opposite. This has been one of the most warm and welcoming communities that I have ever held a career in. I mean that with 100% honesty, in any industry, in any career, there's always going to be one or two people (and not always male), that thinks that they're the smartest person in the room. You can't tell them anything and you can't learn a whole lot from them. Ninety percent of the fishing industry has been completely the opposite. It is a male dominated sport but we're also finding that as we move along in the centuries that we are coming out of the stone ages, there's a lot more women that are getting involved. There’s a few women painters out there that are really cool and very good and I'm glad to see it. I welcome it, the more competition the better.

HPFC: What can we do to get more women involved in fishing in general and swimbaiting in particular?

Jen Kravassi: I think just kind of erase and debunk the misconceptions that have lingered over sports in general for the last few decades. If you could see just how much FUN fishing is, and how cool it is to catch a fish on a pattern that you've painted, something that you've made, that's the neatest thing in the world. It's a competitive sport, yes, but more competitive for yourself, unless you're a tournament angler. If you go to the lake three or four times and you don't catch anything, but that fifth time you go and you've changed something a little bit, it's just like, the neatest thing happens. It may not be for everyone, it may not be for every woman or man out there, there's a lot of guys that don't fish, but I think just debunking the theories and myths that it's just for guys, well, look at how many women hunters are out there now. I think we're getting there, I just think education is part of it and getting more women involved through social media and letting them see that there is also a women's Bass Trail out there. It's available, if you want to compete, there's a whole lot of opportunity.

HPFC: For people who are not already part of it, can you describe this swimbait community culture?

Jen Kravassi: They're the most quirky, lovable, totally mental group of people. They're unique. They're diverse. They're misfits and I fit in beautifully to that. It's just an amazingly organic industry and it's one of the few left. It's one of the parts of this industry that is still mostly grassroots. Yeah, you've got the bigger companies that are putting out ABS plastics that are making swim baits. You've got the Japanese domestic market that's putting out a lot of heavy hitters and lots of wooden swimbaits, which is also cool, but then you have this completely unique garage group of guys and gals that are making baits in their houses, in little tiny shops, and studios. As much as we want to see that grow, it would almost be a shame to see it grow too much, because you'll be taking that special thing away from those folks.

It's almost inevitable that it's going to keep growing because it's almost like the last frontier. It's like the final place where everybody hasn't rushed into, especially with tournament anglers. There are a handful of guys (at least that I’ve seen), Carl Jocumsen, Chris Zaldain, Steve Kennedy and KVD throws them. There's a few guys out there that will throw them and throw them regularly but for the most part, it's still conventional, it's still “how can we catch five fish to win?”

The swimbait universe and swimbait community are kind of like that big kicker fish. Those that only want the ‘big one’ and a swimbait is the only way that you can get them them sometimes.

HPFC: What are your plans and goals for the future?

Jen Kravassi: I am no spring chicken. I've been doing this long enough to know that even with the best chiropractic care, with the best medical health care, my hands are going to give out at some point. My plan for the business is to eventually hire interns and then staff, that can move that part of Jekyll Baits forward. Where I want to be involved? I have started doing a catalog of forage patterns. I want to become more involved with photographing forage fish, those patterns that we all want our customers to have. I would like to have a book published of them. If you've ever been to an aquarium, or you've seen any kind of biology book, you know there's a million different kinds of minnows out there. I'd like to make a book of patterns. I want to get more involved in filming, editing, and take the YouTube channel to the next level. I love working in collaborative efforts. I've got the custom line of Baby Bull Shads and Bull Gills that are out with Catch Co. now, and I want to continue that. It’s the best way to stay relevant in my line of work, just keep doing collaborations. Just keep expanding endeavors and growing Jekyll Bait Co., and give back to the people that have given so much to me.

Jen had so much to share that we couldn’t contain it all in one piece! Head back to this space next Wednesday to read PART TWO.