I want to jot down some of the cool stuff we saw at the FHS before I forget. Brian #2 and Daniel and I rolled down to Long Beach this morning. Overall the show was pretty good. I thought it was a little bit better than last year. Brian #2 noted that there were less bass booths and Turners is getting lamer and lamer every year. Probably the coolest thing at the show (IMO) was the Purglass rods booth. These guys are from like South Africa or somewhere. I noticed some enormous rods and figured they were surf rods, but upon further inspection they were all baitcasting rods. Upon even further inspection they were all graphite baitcasting rods. They had 13ft. graphite baitcasting rods along with slightly smaller models and blanks. I want one of those big ones sooooo bad for a jigstick. Brian #2 pulled on the end of this blank and it was siiick. Feels exactly like fiberglass, but it's graphite. Kinda bad that it's graphite, but it makes it a lot lighter (which is good for 13ft) even though it's not as tough. The rods were also two piece, but the joint looked really solid. Not just a regular break, it was pretty strong looking and the guy assured me that it was perfectly strong, for whatever that's worth. In fact the guy kept looking at me weird when I kept telling him I wanted to throw iron on the big one. He kept showing me the 8ft and the 9ft but I was having nothing of that. So, the 13ft. jigstick is definitely on my wish list. Here's the website- http://www.tfd.cc

At the same booth they had this line called Cuda line. It was really thin and I couldn't break the 8lb. It's also fluorocarbon coated, and although I've had bad experiences with floroclear I'd like to give this stuff a try. It was really cheap too at $9.99 a spool. Unfortunately we forgot to pick some up from the Angler's Center booth.

At the Eric's Tackle booth he had this Osprey eel. That thing was weird looking. Hard to describe, but imagine an Osprey stretched out like a piece of bubblegum and no paddle tail. It was really weird and I wouldn't even know where to begin on how to fish it, but it looked cool.

The Umaxco booth had some Generic Trouts and Generic Bluegills along with the new 16" long deadsticker. It was cool to see all the Rago baits. There were a couple Generic Trout colors that I'd never seen, along with the regular rainbow trout one.

Cruised over to the Assalt/Big Hammer booth to visit the sheepish one (Dimitri). Stocked up on Assalt jigs for $2 ea. That was a good deal. Brian #2 bought 14 jigs.

We found a couple japanese booths. One was Baitbreath. I saw their website awhile ago but kind of gave up on finding their baits, so I was stoked to see them at the show. They had a little aquarium with the dropshot baits in there and they looked good, but I just picked up the twin tail crawdad type thing. It's a lot like the Padtue (availabe at Tackle Island...) but instead of a paddle tail it's got a double tail. I'll take pictures tomorrow.

Right next door was the Nextone booth. These guys had some good looking dropshot baits. With a name like Drug Shad it's hard to go wrong. They had some split tail baits that looked cool so I picked up a bag. They look a lot like the Kohiva worms, only cleaner and better colors. Here's a link to the website- http://www.fishbelly.com/retailers/NextOne/hawgShad.asp

There was one booth with some pretty dope threads (good looking fishing wear). Bought some stuff there. That place was called Stay Bent. New company I guess, same deal as Booyaa or Fishworks.

Stopped by Josh's booth with Bluewater Gloves and picked up a pair since my hands get so frickin jacked in the cold. I think they'll work out. Good for cutting fish if nothing else ;-)

Let's see, best deal was probably found at the Fisherman's Landing booth with Seeker fiberglass blanks for $20. Daniel got two and Brian #2 got one since he needs an albacore rod. I didn't buy one because I've already got like 5 blanks that need to be built. Plus Calstar's better :-)

In the lame department, there were no round float tubes to be found anywhere which is a bummer for Daniel and Brian who were looking to buy new tubes. Turner's had some lame u boats and this other booth had some gigantic u boats. Turner's also had quite an array of Plano boxes but no dang 3700's which is one of the things I wanted to stock up on. Other than that the show was pretty cool. After checking out some Skeeter boats they've moved up in my status of kick @$$ bass boats. The ranking is now Triton, Skeeter, Ranger in that order. Get down to the show if you can, it's always fun to check stuff out. Definiteley go pull on that 13ft. jigstick. I was pulling as hard as I could with the rod horizontal and putting about 10lbs. of pressure on Brian #2's hand. hahaha. I guess you're supposed to hold it straight up when fighting a fish so it works against the rod and not you. Good times. Check it out.
-Brian

Great report Brian.

I went last night too and was pretty pleased with the show. I'll probably go back for one more stint this weekend. My only disappointment was that there wasn't enough bass vendors out there. There were some, but I was hoping for more.

I managed to pick up some Assault jigs as well (six) and some other stuff as well. No rods or reels for me... but maybe this weekend.