So was it worth it for Erik and me to fly from Hawaii to Los Angeles to attend the Fred Hall Show for 3 days?
The plan was to keep our traveling cost down, meet good people and bring back killer deals. We got the lowest priced “Fred Hall Show Special” room at the hotel attached to the Long Beach Convention Center. It was a Hyatt Regency, and very nice, and the hotel rate was lower than I’ve paid in Los Angeles in quite a while. We didn’t rent a car since we would mostly be walking less than 100 yds to the Convention Center that housed the Show, so we saved on rental fees and hotel parking. Erik used Lyft to transport us to the market, Trader Joe’s and a restaurant, and because he was referred by a friend he was given a $20 voucher. I was surprised how easy it was to use the Lyft app, and how friendly and interesting the drivers were. Definitely will use Lyft on my own.
Speaking of Trader Joe’s, I used these health bars to price compare, wow were they cheap! And this photo was taken before the basket really filled up.
On the suggestion of our fishing buddy Kelly, we had brought up small kine omiyage for the exhibitors we hoped to talk with. Hawaiian Host chocolate mac nuts on sale at Long’s and NOH Poke Mix that was easy to pack. I was absolutely stunned how many people asked what I planned to do with those chocolates as I carried the big box around. Male show goers wanted some, and female show goers asked if I bought the box at the show. At the end of each day, we were using the box to carry our killer deals, and stop people in their tracks. We gave the chocolates to exhibitors that were especially nice to us, and the poke mix to the exhibitors who ate poke but didn’t know how to make it. We stuffed our business cards in the packaging and when the cards fell out, we hoped we’d be remembered fondly for sharing a bit of Hawaii.
Even without the omiyage, everyone we met at the show, and on our travels was really courteous and pleasant.
Erik and I were narrowly focused so we zipped past a large portion of the exhibits (fresh water, fly fishing, food, hunting, camping, cooking, boating, destination fishing, etc) and didn’t sit in any of the seminars. There even was a kiddie pond with live stocked trout outside the main arena, and a lagoon to pedal the Hobie Kayaks and cast Daiwa rods.
Jim Sammons
There were two other booths of interest to us that I hadn’t mentioned earlier. The first was Seigler Reels, formerly named Release Reels, and then Truth Reels. The reels are completely made in the US of A and pelagic kayak fishers value them for their small aluminum footprint, big gears, strong drag and simple maintenance. They are often compared to Accurate reels. Jim Sammons, of the Kayak Fishing Show, was helping man the booth with the owner Wes Seigler, and I stopped by because I had bought a live bait well for my Scupper Pro 15 yrs ago and still haven’t used it. Jim didn’t remember me, of course, but did remember the era when he sold those bait wells out of the Fred Hall Show. He was stoked to receive the NOH Poke Mix and Wes was really interested in hearing if he could catch an oio and ulua on a fly rod. Answer: Oio, relatively easy for a skilled fly fisher like him; ulua, much harder with a fly and fly rod.
In fact a lot of the accomplished fishers we talked with wanted to know if they could catch papio/ulua, oio, mahi, ahi, etc in Hawaii. They understood that it may be hard to get a trophy fish the first time out but just wanted to return home and say that they caught something while vacationing in paradise.
Front of jigs, not glowing
Glow pattern on the back of the jig
The Taiwan-based Jigging Master brand was the other brand of interest, and they had vertical and slow pitch jigs with a contrasting glow pattern on the back if you loaded it with a flash light. That might be enough to attract interest in the deep. We purchased a few of these hard to find jigs that we’d normally have to pay shipping to get.
Looking back, we didn’t buy a ton of stuff but what we did get some great deals, were given unique products to test, made some solid business relationships and… when Erik returned home, he called the Shimano service rep we met at the show on Saturday, and the Michael was able to authorize the full replacement of 3 broken, out of warranty jigging and plugging rods Erik had sent up months ago that were lost in storage because the postal service had damaged the mailing label. That cemented the deal for us, we’re definitely going back next year!
