History of

Aaron Horning has loved fishing since before he can remember. His parents will tell stories of him being 1 ½ years old standing with his dad on the bank of their pond watching his dad fish. Aaron was so content being by the water fishing that they gave him a small pole with just a bobber on it… he would cast the pole and reel it in repeatedly all day long.

Anyone who knows him, knows he was born to fish. So when he was old enough, he went down to the local marina to get a job. After seeing what kind of fishing the ocean had to offer, he knew he had to get offshore! He took an apprenticeship on a local sportfishing boat for one year to learn the ropes. Once Aaron was established as a mate, he got a job on another local charter boat, where he worked full time all throughout high school and college. Over the past 9 years, Aaron has worked as both a first mate as well as the mate/captain/main caretaker for the Poor Girl a Custom 65’ Sportfisher by Paul Mann. Following college, Aaron went on to become a Mechanical Engineer working as a contractor for NASA. However, Aaron has continued his work with the Poor Girl during the evenings and on weekends… he cannot get away from fishing!

Although the Poor Girl will fish for all game fish species, the main focus during a normal offshore trip is billfish. The Poor Girl is loaded with all of the latest gear from circle hooks to high-end electric reels for 100+ mullet dredges.

After spending much time offshore, Aaron became convinced that there was something missing . So he started to developed his ideas of a new teaser on paper. Soon after he started to doodle on his sketch pad, he knew he had something unique! So Aaron decided to take the idea further; he began engineering the product. He spent hours upon hours on the computer using 3D modeling tools to get everything just right and after many engineering hours, Aaron hand built his first teaser. After an entire season of testing and tuning, the teaser was working as planned. Throughout the 2007 fishing season the Poor Girl caught more than its share of billfish and the new teaser proved that it had a permanent place out in the trolling spread.

Aaron has now acquired financial backing and has had professional molds made according to the design. He is excited to see where this teaser will go and cannot wait for Marlin-X to be seen and used by others in the sportfishing community.