The AF crew spent most of the week in Orlando at the Super Bowl of all fishing trade shows: ICAST. At the show, we were given the tour of new products that are ready for release or soon to be in production. There were hundreds of booths, thousands of industry reps and it took three days of walking to see them all. Awards were given out for new product showcased items that were voted upon by the attendees. At ICAST, these winners are called “Best of Show” but here at Addictive Fishing we are proud to call them “our sponsors.” Here’s a bird’s eye look at ICAST and the Addictive Fishing family.
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| Mogan of the Week - Riley's South Carolina redfish |
There was quite a buzz around the Minn Kota/Humminbird booth. Or was it the hum of all the electronic goodies they brought to the show? The NEW Minn Kota iPilot Link is a great upgrade to connect the Humminbird Fishfinder to the Minn Kota trolling motor. Think of the possibilities! The GPS can control the trolling motor to find and hold on a spot or follow a path previously saved. It can also be used to follow depth contours or be set to follow the contours from a set distance in order to make your casts to the ledge. We will be exploring the iPilot Link in more detail later. For now let’s turn our attention to the winner for Best New Electronics: Humminbird360 Imaging. With an incredibly detailed 360-degree view around the boat, there’s no place for the fish to hide!
At the Eagle Claw/Lazer/Wright & McGill booth, there was a lot to talk about. The Lazer TroKar commercial for the new freshwater and saltwater hooks, featuring Capt. Blair Wiggins, was pumping on the video screen. There were plenty of Flats Blue rods for the Mogan Man to show and demo including the NEW Flats Blue surf rods and fly rods. Taking home a Best of Show award for best new fly reel was Wright &McGill’s NEW Sabalos fly reel. The ultra lightweight and strong bar stock aluminum frame and spool have a hard anodized two-tone finish that is impervious to saltwater. This reel is gorgeous!Our friends at Costalooked like they were on vacation with their custom built, two-story beach shack booth that included palm trees, umbrella tables and beach sand. That’s right, Costa brought their own beach to the show. Costa’s NEW 580P Sunrise lens was voted Best of Show for best new eyewear. Specially designed for use during low light hours of sunrise and sunset, the new 580P Sunrise lens really shines!
As always, it’s good to see our friends Dave and Karla from FINS. They shared some great success stories from dealers that started stocking FINS situational braids. We saw Mr. Mark Nichols, creator of DOA Lures, who has something in the works that’s so top secret he could not bring it to ICAST. Eric Bachnik of MirrOlure showed off the new color schemes for the C-eyes Pro Series MirrOdine and new colors for the soft baits. And if we missed anybody in this week’s article, well, there’ll be more news next week.
Photo contest
Here’s a Mogan Lounge exclusive! The Mogan Lounge Summer Photo Contest is only open to registered Lounge members so get signed up today! We'll have 2 sets of 2 winners chosen August 1st & 22nd. The Mogan Man will be pulling one winner for each round but the other winner will be photos with the most "cool" clicks by fellow Lounge members in each round. Be sure to read ALL of the rules because pictures cannot be altered in any way and they must include descriptions. So, pull out all the stops! Capt. Blair is going to be looking for creativity, originality, clarity, composition and best Mogan Man impression. Word!
Coming Up on Addictive Fishing
“The Bimini Boys” set out on the 60’ Star brite sportfisher to get hung up down deep. With Capt. Peter Dornau (President of Star brite) at the helm and Capt. Kevin Cote from Bimini on the deck, it takes Blair no time at all to get hooked up. In 922 feet of water, it takes Blair longer to drop his bait to the snapper than it takes the snapper to eat his bait. Catch the excitement Friday @ 10:30 am, Sunday @ 9:30 pm and again on Tuesday @ 6:00 am on SunSports. Can’t get enough Addictive Fishing on the tube? Subscribe to the AFYouTube channel. It’s FREE and airs any episode at the click of a mouse 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As an added bonus, Mr. Producer will throw in this week’s episode in its entirety on Tuesday! This week we have a special webisode of "After the Fight." Get insight from Blair and Kevin as they relive the shoot in the Bahamas.
Mogan of the Week
Riley Kent from Charleston, SC proves to us that they don’t have to be huge to be a Mogan. Riley is one of our newest members in the Mogan Lounge and his first post shows us a beautiful 20” redfish. Redfish are fun at any size but to put it in better terms, let me quote from another fan of the show, “Size don’t matter, honey!”
After all that walkin’, my dogs are barkin’,
BillBird