I hope not everyone misses the irony of a lot of ideas in this thread.
Long hours and knows everything about the area lakes - ummm, if the owner did not hit the lottery and wants to waste his money away - he will HAVE to work AT THE STORE to make any sort of profit. Period!! He is not going to hop from lake to lake and gather reports for us...sorry! Only intel will be from the guys coming in, who, let's be honest are pretty tight lipped about honey holes, hot spots and hot baits.
Not unreasonable prices on equipment or last minute repairs. Common, to compete with a BassPro or worse yet Walmart is IMPOSSIBLE!! Period. When you buy jigs/lures/line/equipment a couple dozen at a time vs. Walmart who may purchase 200,000 Zebco reels nationwide and has a direct relationship with Zebco, it's impossible to compete.
They have to make a profit to stay in business, and in order to make a profit on equipment it will seem outrageous, but that's life. Yea, they may have stuff on the shelve from 1986 because no one will pay what the store needs to sell to make a profit.
Here's a secret - there is not a place in the Virgin Islands or Aruba where all the rich, billionare's who retired from their lucrative business selling worms, frogs and minnows go to retire! These people barley make a living. If it was a lucrative business opportunity, they would not be going out of business left and right.
Let's face it, 95% of the places I buy bait from have a small section of equipment, but their main purchases and sales are live bait. How many dozens of minnows would a guy have to sell PER DAY to make rent, wage for himself, insurance, utilities and upkeep? Now factor in the days it rains and the guy does not get a single customer - happens more than you think - so now he needs to sell double or triple the bait the next day. How about the time when the water is too cold to fish, but not enough ice to ice fish - maybe a month - where he's not getting much traffic in the store at all!
It's sadly a horrible business to get into that is very likely to fail. Lewiston Michigan had a really nice bait shop that opened two years ago. Really nice guy. They are now boarded up.
Now, there are some great ideas here like offering soup, etc. Hopefully the owners can get creative and figure out how to stay in business....for our sake. I know this thread is about ideas, not how to run a business but please keep this in mind.
Just my 2 cents.