MELROSE — Chuck Barth, Joe Hellermann and Al Leinen are three businessmen from Melrose who have been united by their love of fishing and boating for many years.

Now, with the help of Dave Andersen, a professional walleye angler from Amery, Wis., they hope to have hooked into a real lunker with their plan to resurrect a defunct boat label.

The four men recently bought many of the assets of Warrior Boats, a company that started making pontoons in the mid-1980s in Maple Lake but became known for its high-end fiberglass fishing models. The operation — like many others in the boating industry — hit hard times during the recession and went out of business more than a year ago.

Barth, who has a cattle farm and dog kennels near Melrose, was on the Warrior pro staff for almost a decade. He fished a lot of tournaments and got to know Andersen, a Professional Walleye Trail Championship winner who has run eight Warrior boats since 1997.

“When they closed their doors, I talked with Dave about buying into it,” said Barth, 57, who has owned six Warriors — the latest a 20-foot 2009 model geared to hit the water at a moment’s notice. “We figured if we didn’t do anything, our boats would be worth nothing. But it took a long time to get to this point. We’ve walked in slow. At first, we were looking at having a lot of investors but it got so complicated we dropped it. And, if we’d have bought the existing building, we wouldn’t have had enough money left for operating capital.”