Meet Our Instructors

Todd Vivian has been building custom rods for 35 years.

After spending 20 years as lead rod designer for Lamiglas in Washington state, Todd relocated to Florida to develop complete lines of blanks for Mud Hole.

16 years and 600+ blanks later, Todd is still just as passionate about fishing, sharing his knowledge as lead instructor for Mud Hole's education program.

Buzz Butters has been building custom rods for 35 years.

He began teaching high school students about 20 years ago and joined Mud Hole as part of the Teaching Staff about 8 years ago.

His company, B&B Custom Rods is a well-known purveyor of Walleye and Ice fishing rods in the Wisconsin-area.

As a school teacher, Cindy McKay first came to Mud Hole with the intention of sharing rod building with her students.

She quickly realized that parents were just as eager to learn, and joined Mud Hole as an instructor in our nationwide on-the-road series of classes.

Cindy has been with Mud Hole Custom Tackle as a regular instructor since 2017.

Curt Baker has been building and fishing custom rods in the Tampa, FL area for over 35 years.

With grouper, snapper and black tip shark as his favorite species to target, he has built countless rods for them over the years.

Curt has been sharing his knowledge through Mud Hole's education program for over 10 years.

Mike Kosiba has been a rod building instructor with Mud Hole for about 5 years, though he began his rod building career in the late 90’s – bringing decades of rod building experience to Mud Hole. 

Mike grew up in Florida but has been able to sharpen his skills fishing in places around the country, for virtually every species of fish… although he still prefers the trout and redfish in the Indian River.

Jesus Peña was a student in our very first rod building workshop over 10 years ago!

He flew to Chicago from South Texas to take this class in 2009. Soon after, he began helping instruct Mud Hole classes in Corpus Christi, Houston and Dallas.

Jesus has been with Mud Hole Custom Tackle as a full time instructor for over 5 years.