Hiya -
Well, I survived Sin City
This might be a little scatterbrained, because my flight was delayed last night and I got into Mpls about 3 AM. So I'm a little punchy, but here goes...
(Not too much for photos, sadly. I get loaded down like a pack mule with press releases as it is, so lugging a camera besides gets to be a huge headache. Plus they have pretty strict rules on what you can and can't photograph there... I have a ton of press CDs with photos though so I may be able to upload some when I get settled down.)
One big item, not really product related, was the announcement on Wednesday that the Elite Series is eliminating the co-anglers completely. Overall it sounds like it's a pretty popular move with the anglers. 'Levels the playing field' was the general consensus I heard.
Product stuff - and this is obviously an incomplete list...
Shimano: New Curados look outstanding. I talked to Jason Sweet, who's the main reel engineer at Shimano, and he said with the addition of the extra spool bearing the durability should go way up, and he thinks this reel is comparable to the Chronarchs of just a couple years ago. What amazed me was how compact they are. The 200 size Curado is now roughly the same size as last year's 100, but has the 200-series line capacity. It's much much lighter than last year's Curados too. I also really like the low gear ratio version - be great for cranks. Coolest thing is they did all that and then actually dropped the price 20 bucks. Oh yeah - they're green again too.
The Citica got an upgrade too. It uses the same tooling as the Curado now, so the design of the frame is identical. The spool is different and there are 3 less bearings, but for $120, it's an awful lot of reel for the money.
Shimano also upgraded basically their whole spinning reel line-up from mid-range on down. They brought the Propulsion drive system they brought out on their high end spinning reels last year all the way down the line to the Solstace, and made some other upgrades here and there on most of the models between the Solstace and the Symetre.
In the rod dept, they did a major upgrade to the Clarus lineup - sort of refining the actions on almost every blank, going to a better grade of graphite, and upgrading some of the components like reel seats and guides. They kept the price range the same though - $69-$89. I think the Clarus rods are one of the best bang for the buck deals around, and they just got better...
Pure Fishing:
I swear, the Pure Fishing 'booth' was the size of half a football field. It was huge... I honestly don't think i saw everything they had there.
- Reels
The new Revo Winch and Skeet Reese editions were there. The Winch is a really nice looking crankbait reel - low gear ratio and really compact. The Skeet Reese Revo looked really awesome - amazingly smooth. They also did some new stuff with some of their spinning reels.
- Line
Bunch of new lines from Berkley this year. Fireline Braid - which is a braided line made from the same material as fireline, so it'll stay round on a baitcasting reel. Stealth Camo - a camo braid, a new Stren Braid that looks really good. Fireline Tracer, which is fireline with alternating smoke gray and bright yellow every 2.5 feet. Be awesome for jig fishing where you're line watching. Gray fireline can be REALLY hard to see sometimes.
- Plastics
Good Lord...where do I start?
TONS of new Gulp Alive shapes. Jerk Shads, a Beaver-style bait... They also have a new container that's sort of oval-shaped so it can hold longer baits without them curling up (Gulp will take a set which has been a problem with curly-tail worms until now). They also have Gulp Alive assortments now, so you can get one bucket with a bunch of species-specific shapes. If you haven't tried Gulp Alive yet, try it. The stuff can be amazing.
In regular bagged Gulp they have some new shapes - 2", 3", and 4" grubs and some others. PowerBait has a bunch of new stuff. 7" Hand Pour finesse worms, 3" and 4" paddle tail grubs (I'm REALLY stoked about those...), and the PowerBait Heavy worms are really cool. These have weight in them so you can fish a wacky worm deep without waiting a half hour for it to sink. A 5" Heavy worm drops like a 1/16 oz jig but still has the action of a Senko-type bait.
They also followed up their Hollow Belly Swimbait with a hollow belly tube and jerk shad, which have some amazing paint jobs.
- Rods
Some redesigned Lightning Rods (which are still good rods for the buck) and some very cool bass specific rods in the Fenwick line. They have a really really cool series of crankbait rods that was a back to the future moment for me. They're a composite glass/graphite blank, where the top half of the blank is glass, and the lower half is wrapped with graphite, so it's a two-tobe blank - really funky looking. About 20 years ago, Thorne Brothers did the same thing with muskie rods, and in the new Fenwick line, even the colors are the same (black and yellow.) I may pick one up for running braid with deep cranks. They have some really nice bass spinning rods too.
Several companies have new swimbaits out - not exactly breaking news there. Since Nature Vision bought Castaic, they're coming out with a bunch of baits in sizes and color patterns for northern markets - i.e., for us. They have a 4" perch pattern and bluegill pattern hard swimbait coming you have to see to believe. They also have some soft swimbaits that are killer. There's a perch pattern soft swimbait that's just going to get clobbered...
Northland has a whole pile of new bass stuff coming in their Dean Rojas line. 3" beaver-type baits (going to be awesome smallmouth baits), a new jig trailer, some REALLY awesome new jigheads, including a phenomenal shaky head. A new 5" swimbait too. (And TONS of new ice fishing stuff - new jigs, soft plastics...very cool)
Mustad and Owner both have new Swimbait hooks coming out. One of the knocks on baits like the Money Minnow is that it's hard to get hooks with them using standard hooks - even EWGs. These should solve the problem (and for muskie guys like me, they're going to go up to 8/10 and 10/0 for big muskie plastics.) Owner also has a really nifty trailer hook system for swimbaits that looks really slick.
St Croix has some very nice new rods coming out in several of their lines. The completely overhauled their Legend Elite series with new materials and some new actions. The most exciting thing though was a new series called Mojo Bass. It's a technique-specific line with a dozen models (9 casting, 3 spinning) that will retail for $90-$120. Really, really nice rods for the $$$, and a 5 year warranty. The Legend Extremes are also very cool (though on the other end of the price range from the Mojo series...heh). They are jaw-droppingly light. (Is jaw-droppingly a word? It is now I guess...). Split grips, titanium recoil guides, ASC real seats... I mean, they weigh nothing. Their 7'6" flipping stick weights under 5 ounces...
Lots more stuff there too obviously, but that's some of what jumps to mind on no sleep. Just fun being there though. Talked to a lot of industry types while I was there. Talked to Al and Jim Linder and Dan Sura for quite a while, Scott Martin, Hank Parker, Larry Dahlberg, talked to Jimmy Houston for a while - I hadn't seen him since my Camp Fish days. Had lunch with Steve Quinn at one of the press conferences and got to hear some stores about bass fishing in Mexico that made me turn me several shades of green...
BPA and CB - No consumers allowed at ICAST. You have to apply and provide credentials to get a pass if you aren't an exhibitor, and they REALLY screen people trying to get in.
Ocf1 - you missed your chance. This was the last year for ICAST in Vegas. It's moving to Orlando next year so it can run alongside the big marine industry trade show. For the record, Orlando in July is NOT a dry heat...
OK...running out of steam rapidly. Rob sleep now...
Cheers,
Rob Kimm
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