Any serious angler knows the importance of bait — especially live bait. But have you ever thought about the quality of the bait, and how that affects the ease and experience of your fishing trip and the fish you catch?
Enter Keys Feeds, whose mission is to “provide premium nutritional solutions that enhance the strength, health and endurance of baitfish, ultimately maximizing fishing success for our customers.”
Rick Barrows, who has a doctorate in fish nutrition, is the founder of Keys Feeds and created a product that has now become a local family-run business.
“For a living, I used to develop feed for a variety of different species,” Barrows said. “I came down here fishing and was with a guy and he was telling me how they harden baits. … It was with a trout feed and not even a good one, so I started making some for my friends and captains.”
Prior to moving to Islamorada in 2015 with his wife, Sue, Barrows was a research scientist for 15 years with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, developing feeds for endangered and threatened species as well as sportfish and food fish. Then he spent another 15 years with USDA but focused more on food fish. He has 40 years overall in fish farming research and experience. His wife’s background is in veterinary medicine. She, too, is part of the Keys Feeds team.
The Barrows’ son, Bill, moved to the Keys in 2020. He designed a website and they started selling the product to local retailers in 2021. The early Keys adapters were West Marine (all five Keys locations), Marine Max at Ocean Reef and the Tackle Center in Islamorada.
Fast forward to October 2024, about a year-and-a-half after Bill met his now-fiancé Rebekah Dunaj; they decided to put Dunaj’s sales and social media experience and strengths to use and expand the brand.
“There’s something incredibly special about growing a business together,” said Dunaj. “And along the way, I have had the incredible opportunity to meet Rick. I am truly fortunate to learn from someone with such extensive knowledge and passion for marine health.”
Both Bill Barrows and Dunaj are using that knowledge to educate about Keys Feeds with word of mouth in the past six months, leading to a plethora of new business, from Key West to Riviera Beach. Their primary market has turned out to be tournament anglers and people who go out and feed the fish on their canal dock — making Keys Feeds a perfect product for any angler and all ages.
“A lot of guys have been doing what they have been doing,” Bill said. “But there is no product like this on the market of comparable quality and once they get their hands on it, it’s an easy conversion.”
Another important aspect is the local bait and tackle shops that sell bait and can use the feed to enhance the quality of the bait. Chris’s Bait & Tackle Shop at Tavernier Creek Marina is one example. Carson Rutz, owner of Butter Baits Islamorada, has a lot of experience and uses Keys Feeds regularly for the bait he sells.
“In my opinion, live bait is the most important ingredient for a successful day of fishing, and with the amount of time and money spent on fishing, quality feed is a no-brainer,” Rutz said. “I love how the pellets sink at variable rates, which gives the baits more opportunity to consume 100% of the pellets, and very little goes to waste.”
The Yellow Bait House in Key Largo is another Upper Keys retailer and bait supplier stocking Keys Feeds for its bait. It can also be purchased at Lobster Walk in Islamorada.
The product is made in the U.S. and distributed out of the Lower Keys.
“What we’ve really done is rather than looking at it from a bait standpoint, we’ve looked at it from a fish farming and nutrition standpoint and we’ve brought information from the fish farming world to the bait fish world,” Rick Barrows said. “That’s what makes it different from other feeds.
“Sixty percent of our seafood worldwide is produced on farms,” Rick continued. “A lot of research, development and innovation is going on in fish farming that we can apply to the bait fish feed.”
Is it possible to overfeed the bait? Rick said once a day is okay, “but I like to feed twice a day. Dribble it in versus shovel a whole bunch. You can tell if you are feeding too much because if it’s a wire cage you’ll have a lot of snapper or parrotfish.”
For the person who wants to just have fun feeding the snapper or parrotfish at the dock, this is a testament that it works for those fish too.
“The best aha moments for me are when a customer appreciates and notices the differences that Keys Feeds makes with their bait in regards to survival and performance,” Bill said.
Keys Feeds’ website contains tips about bait and feed. Keys Feeds works for pilchards, pinfish, goggle-eyes, threadfin, grunts — everything they have looked at so far. More information is at www.keysfeeds.com, @keysfeeds on Instagram and Facebook and @keys.feeds on TikTok.
