It’s boat show/fishing show season!
Lots of fishermen look at January as a time when they can step back and take a month completely off from fishing — winterizing your boat, cleaning your tackle, then sitting back and watching pro football playoffs and college basketball on TV.
I have always looked forward to January because of the boat shows and fishing shows that fill the weekends. I go to a lot of them now because I’m giving seminars or working for some of my sponsors, but I still love to go, walk around and see everything. I get a sneak preview at the ICAST show every summer, but most people don’t get their first look at the boats and tackle and the other new stuff until the January boat and fishing shows.
It’s amazing to me to see the products and see all the improvements and accessories that the companies have come up with. Several years ago, Triton came out with the ladder that extends from the boat’s hull; that was an idea with the potential to save a lot of lives, and it first shows up at the shows as an accessory and now is standard equipment. Pfleuger has come out with a new, lighter reel, and All-Star has changed their rods — I love the new line with the micro-eyes; they’re super light and strong.
Boat and fishing shows offer fishermen two huge opportunities: to evaluate all the new products in a central location, and to get stuff at the best prices of the year – you can usually get stuff 10- to 25-percent off normal prices. It costs $8 to $10 to get into a show, but with the cost of gas high and the economy being tight, you can see all the different models of boats in one place and not have to drive all over the Lowcountry or the Upstate going to different dealers. Shows are a bargain because you save way more money than that in gas.
I think it’s important to go in with a plan. Buying a boat is a huge investment, and you don’t need to get carried away when you walk into a show and see all those different boats and models and all the accessories. You need to go in knowing what you want, need and can afford. You might be in the market to buy a new boat, and you need to go in knowing what size boat you need and can afford, the size motor you’ll need to push it, and what you’ll be looking for in a trolling motor and electronics. Some of the models that Humminbird has available can do just about everything a fisherman could ever want. You might be satisfied with the boat you’ve got, but you may just need to repower with a new Evinrude because yours is finally starting to show some signs of age after 50 years.
The key is to make a list and have a set budget to go buy, because going into a boat show is like going into a car lot; you go thinking you’re going to spend “X” dollars. You need to keep a level head so you don’t spend too much or spend on something you originally didn’t think you needed.
Now, when it comes to tackle, I’m like a kid in a candy store at one of these shows. I’ve got more tackle than I or my sons can ever use. In fact, I sometimes wonder why my Triton doesn’t run 75 mph all the time, but when I look in the compartments and find 400 pounds of plastic worms, I get my answer. I make my living fishing, and I know I spend more money on tackle and baits than most people.
But go in knowing what you’re looking for. Do you need a cranking rod, a flipping stick? Do you need a reel with a fast-retrieve ratio? Do you need soft tackle boxes for your plastics or a hard-plastic box for your crankbaits.
When it comes to baits, check your inventory before you go. What colors and what styles of soft-plastic baits are you missing? You’re going to need those mainstay baits – worms, jigs, jig trailers – and you probably need to replenish the colors you use the most, your watermelons and green pumpkins. So check your inventory before you go and buy only what you need – or maybe, one or two packs of something that really strikes your fancy.
One thing I think is worth mentioning. Fishermen can get caught up in buying a lot of different hard baits at shows because they see something that looks good to them. Crankbaits are the baits that I see most people not investing in wisely. Most fishermen don’t use logic; they see a color they like and they buy that bait, no matter that they’ll never fish in the kind of conditions where they’ll use it.
If you think about what’s most important about buying crankbaits, you need to buy baits that run different depths. You don’t want to go buy 20 crankbaits that all run five feet deep. If you’re going to buy 20 crankbaits, you need seven that run one to five feet, seven that run five to 10, and seven that run deeper than 10. Most fishermen who don’t have success with crankbaits don’t have baits that run to the depths they need. Rapala did a great job when they named their DT baits with the depths they’re run. They run “down to” four, six, 10, 12 feet. Spend your money on baits that will run to the depths you need.
If you take anything away from this column, remember this: boat and fishing shows are for fishermen like Black Friday is for women. It’s a once-a-year opportunity.
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