Cody Raye Greenwell
Hometown: Louisville, KY
Occupation: Electrical Engineer Ford Motor Company
Owner: Greenwell Electronics

My love for the water and the great outdoors started at birth.  We lived in Louisville, but my family had a place at Rough River.  I cut my teeth on a fishing rod.   Rough River is where I caught my first fish when I was 2 years old.  I spent most of my weekends and summers on the water there. Up at dawn searching for that perfect fishing hole, every night reading fishing articles trying to figure out where the fish will be the next morning.  While my buddies were playing video games, I was setting up my tackle box and getting my poles ready for the next day.  When they wanted to watch a movie I would put in a tape of the Bass Masters Classic!  Fishing is in my heart and soul. By my early teens I was already fishing local club tourneys on Rough River Lake. 

I fished The Bardstown Bass Masters Annual Kids Day for 7 years.  These outings taught me how important it is to support and teach kids the value of fishing and respecting our land and lakes.  These guys really worked hard to put together a day to make all the kids feel special.

I earned a full paid 4 year scholarship to UofL where i graduated with Electrical Engineering degree. When I started college there was no opportunities specifically tuned for college kids. My second year in college ESPN started the Smashmouth Bass Championship. You were required to compete in multiple events within your college to qualify.  That pushed me to co-found and achieve UofL senate approval to start a sports team, The UofL L-Raisin Anglers. After four 1st place finishes my first year and winning the regional event I qualified for the championship. This was the start of an adventure that i never could have imagined. I went on to competed in Smashmouth Bass Championship 3 years in a row, Fox College Sports National Championship 3 years in a row, FLW College fishing, and won the Arkansas Tech invitational.

While in college I started working part time at Bass Pro Shop in their marine department selling electronics and then moved to the sales floor for boats. Through this I was able to meet and talk with several sales reps as well as specialists in the marine electronics industry. I started doing seminars at the spring fishing classic as well as other events. This allowed me to train/meet a lot of great guys and rig a lot of interesting boats. But the common denominator was the more people learned the more they realized they could do and the more they wanted to learn. I was really fortunate that around this same time the marine electronics industry was exploding. Side Imaging was really starting to come on strong, graphs were getting more powerful with more features, and mapping was growing exponentially. More and more requests were coming for classes, training, setup help, and just general knowledge across the board. That’s when I decided to start doing on-the-water training sessions so people could learn in their own rig, on their own equipment. It was really received well and I’ve continued it ever since. 

After college I continued competitive bass fishing in some BFL and ABA events, and the Renegade Team Circuit Twin Lakes Division, with my good buddy Nick Steiden. I don’t fish many tournaments these days but I do A LOT of Striper and Hybrid Striper fishing, mainly at Rough River Lake and Lake Cumberland. I used to fish Minnesota at least a week a year. I’ve fished most every state from Texas east to the North Carolina Coast, and from Minnesota south to Alabama. 

About five years ago I was introduced to the muskie fishing world, I don’t know if that was a blessing or a curse. I’ve spent more money than I ever thought possible on one species of fish. My first day on Cave Run I went out with local guide, Darrell Seassor, where I caught my first muskie at 38”. The next morning I went out in my rig with my buddy Matt Chamberlain, who had only muskie fished twice, and I boated a 40” and 46.5” muskie. I was dead hooked, the obsession had started. I only fish about a week a year, in the fall, for muskie. But we have managed to boat 24 muskies in that time. Six our first week, four on year 2, 8 on year 3, 2 on year 4, and 4 on year 5. Year five we didn’t fish but a few days, and year four the lake was flooded like crazy the week we were there. We had never faced conditions like that. 

Living in Louisville I do quite a bit of on-the-water training on Taylorsville Lake. However having a place at Rough River Lake, I end up doing the majority of them there. I do travel to other lakes in KY and occasionally southern Indiana. Typical trip is $300 for a 4-hour course. If it’s not one of the lakes within a couple hours I will still do it but for additional $0.50/mile within reason. Rarely a client will want to spend more time on the water and that’s typically $75/hr. But what I tell most people is by the time we hit the 4-hour mark you will have seen and heard more than you can absorb. Going 6 hours is usually too overwhelming. Using your system for a few months or a year and then taking a more advanced course with me is always better than a 6 or 8 hour course all at once. More often than not, a client will learn enough in 4-hours to take the bull by the horns and continue learning on their own from experience. When I get multiple clients that are in the same area that requires travel I will sometimes setup a time to meet with all of them together for a short seminar and conduct multiple on-the-water trainings in the same day or weekend. One trip typically consists of first taking a look over their setup, checking transducer placement, angle, obstructions, etc. Then going over their NEMA and ethernet networks. Making sure all units have the latest software and teaching them how to backup their settings and waypoints. Then the on the water training. And ends with saving their custom configuration that i have setup and exporting it to an SD card. That way they can always return their unit to the state it was in when I  left regardless of what changes they may make, or issues they may have. I also do over the phone setup advice and consultation. If its one of my regular clients, or a potential new client I don’t charge anything for that. If it’s someone just looking for a one time consultation it’s $25 for the call. If its something that’s going to involve a WebEx conference with some extended training, I typically charge $50/hr.