Got someone in your life who’s hard to please, appreciates the beautiful and bespoke, or simply likes stuff that simply does what it’s supposed to? Well, if they like to fish on top of all that, start following Trey Anderson on social media and watch for the Smith Lake-base craftsman’s next drop of custom-made lures. When it’s time to start holiday shopping, it’s a move that you (and they) definitely won’t regret.

A retired Army vet who’s been making, painting and field testing his lures right on Smith Lake since 2019, Anderson has already put his tackle in the hands of some of the fishing world’s elite, with pros like Scott Martin, Gerald Swindle, Matt Arey, Scott Canterbury and Jesse Wiggins all picking up on his hand-crafted ReelTime Anglers hardware.

“ReelTime Anglers — RTA, just like Richard Trey Anderson!” he jokes about his startup fishing brand’s easy-to-remember name, though there’s no joking around when it comes to the care he puts into hand-painting and assembling each of his custom creations. From his well-fitted basement workshop, Anderson and his small-batch lure lines have already found their way onto local store shelves (the next time you’re in Cullman, drop by Mary Carter and look for the RTA logo) — even as word continues to spread across the wider angling community about the Smith Lake lure artist with the magic airbrush touch.

Hold them up close, and Anderson’s lures seem to shimmer with a miles-deep paint job that wouldn’t look out of place on a high-end guitar or a carefully restored vintage vehicle. That’s more than mere coincidence: Each lure’s eye-arresting magic lies in Anderson’s go-to secret of using specialty automotive paints, a master stroke he discovered after lifting some leftovers from a body shop-owning friend.

“One day I asked him — ‘What are you going to do with all your extra paint, man?’ and he was like, ‘Well, if I ever need to touch up a Mazda or a Toyota or a Ford, I keep it around.’ So I said, ‘Hey — let me see what that’ll do if I put it on a lure!”

In five short years, what it’s done is put Anderson’s handiwork on the angling map — though it’s not only major anglers who prize his one-of-a-kind artistry. “I’d say a fourth of my clients are people who don’t even fish. They just want to gift it to somebody, or they want to put it up on the shelf,” said Anderson.

“I have a lot of people who look me up on Facebook or Instagram; they’ll see my stuff, and they’re like, ‘Dude — that’s good!’ So I had a guy from Texas who ordered like $500 or $600 worth of lures. And he didn’t even know how to catch a fish! He said, ‘Hey, I’m going to put these in my garage, and you know, if you croak one day … well, maybe they’ll be worth $10,000!’ So I do get those people who just collect, who don’t want this stuff to ever see the water.”

Anderson has only recently gotten into the packaging game, putting his RTA logo on ready-to-buy lure boxes that house tackle big and small for freshwater and saltwater fish alike. It’s how you’ll spot them in stores like Mary Carter … even if you have to wait a week (or three) for Anderson’s latest and greatest creations to appear.

“My wife, she wants me to take this even bigger” and figure out how to scale into mass production, explains Anderson. “But the way I see it, once you’ve done that, it’s moved out of my hands. The way I do this now, nobody can duplicate it. If you go into someone’s tackle box right now, you’ll see the difference between what I make and what that guy’s buying from Bass Pro Shops or Walmart. The neat thing about my stuff is — there’s just one painter doing this. It’s all just me, you know?”

Just like he does for his pro angling pals, Anderson’s always happy to field custom orders from the folks he meets online. Check out his upcoming batches (or even message him to dream up your own) by following ReelTime Anglers (search the site for that name), on Instagram (@reeltimeanglers), or by texting him your next big-fish idea at 205-657-2844.