Just Call Him IFISH
Bill Laws shows off his latest catch. Laws is the owner of ifishapparel.com
IFISH is the outdoors apparel company owned by Bill Laws, of Columbus, Mississippi.
Take one step into Bill Laws’s office and his love of fishing is immediately apparent. His walls are covered with trophies of fish, pictures of fish, rods and reels, lures, and flies – many of which he made by hand.
“Ever since I was old enough to walk my father took me fishing,” said Laws. “He fished for fifty something years and he taught me all I know about it.”
When he got his driver’s license at 15, he immediately began running boats in bass tournaments. After graduating from high school, he won a few big tournaments.
“That’s when I had to make a decision,” he said. “My father agreed to either sponsor me for a year as a professional fisherman or pay for four years of college. I took the college route.”
While Laws does not regret his decision to choose education over becoming a professional bass fisherman, his love of the sport has never lessened.
He went to Mississippi State University, in large part, to make sure he was close enough to home to fish every weekend.
For the past 30 years, he’s spent his free time fishing for crappie and bass in Mississippi, red fish in Louisiana, and trout fishing in Colorado, Utah, New York, and Arkansas.
“Fishing is a passion I grew up with. To me, fishing is about being in God’s creation and embracing the competition between man and fish,” he said. “Tricking a fish is not easy. You have to convince a fish to bite your lure. You have to know how the fish thinks. When you’re fly fishing, you are doing that with a lure you might have even tied yourself. There’s nothing better in the world.”
In 2016, Laws created an apparel company, IFISH. The name comes from the car tag Laws had when he was in college.
“Everyone called me, IFISH,” he said. “I still have that tag. I went fishing with a friend of mine who was in the t-shirt business who really liked the name, and he encouraged me to come up with a logo.”
With that encouragement, he asked his son to create a logo and began selling the brand.
“We developed a web page a couple years ago, and that’s where we are now,” he said. “Now, IFISH is everywhere from Washington State to Florida. I always wanted to be in the fishing industry and now I am.”
Laws is excited about Global Outdoors simply because he knows it will open up avenues to fish in places it hasn’t occurred to him to try.
“I’m looking to fish the best places in the world, yes, there’s Google, but often you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into even if you find a spot there,” he said. “It’s all over the place. But with Global Outdoors, all these places are in one place, and you know the reviews are coming from people who care about fishing as much as you do. And that’s Global Outdoors.”
