On the Job

>>Steve Schadt makes his living running the corporate development division of San Diego-based Einstein Industries Inc., creating Web sites and collateral materials for pharmaceutical companies. On his own time, the 35-year-old Sarasota resident puts his Web skills to work for his real passion-fishing-on www.hornet

bear.com. His Weblog, full of fishing tales and photos of reds, snook and other prized catches, provides a wealth of information about fishing in Southwest Florida. He gets about 1,000 unique hits a month, including a handful from the Naples-Fort Myers area. His blog is also attracting attention from national corporations, including Volcom and Haber, which send him equipment to test and blog about, and sponsor his fishing expeditions. It's a sideline Schadt is happy to have as a hobby.

What's your process? I go out in my back yard, go fishing, and I always take spectacular pictures just being out there. The fish are cool, and the place itself is cool. You don't necessarily need to be in Yosemite to find inspiration.

Do you ever get to Fort Myers or Naples to fish? A few times a year I get down there. I love to fish [in] the Everglades and Ten Thousand Islands. It's one of my favorite places to go because it's so rugged.

Who's your audience? The masses. I get a kick out of it, and I find that people dig it. People are crazy into fishing. I get a lot of e-mails.

What kinds of gear do you get? People send me stuff from all over the country to check out and try-fishing poles, hats. But what does it do to my income? Not a whole lot. I'm an illustrator, writer and photographer, and [blogging] is a venue for that.