At ICAST 2022, Realistic Plastics Rule The Day

The fishing tackle industry has been through quite the roller-coaster the last couple of years — like all of us, I guess.

When the pandemic hit, millions of dollars of product was halted in the supply chain just as the 2020 fishing season was getting rolling. Tackle shops were left in the lurch, and revenue stopped flowing at all stages of the industry, even as there was a gargantuan new wave of demand from new boat owners and tens of thousands of people who suddenly didn’t have to go to work every day and were yearning for things to do away from crowds.

As the supply chain sputtered back to life in the midsummer of 2020, the industry surged into an 18-month stretch that would be one of the best in its history. New tackle companies have popped up left and right, and those that were well established have taken advantage of a market that was starved for more and more.

Last week, I visited the American Sportfishing Association’s annual international tackle industry convention, ICAST, to get a peek at what the tackle industry has in store for us all this fall and in 2023, and the effects of the pandemic, both good and bad, are still very apparent.

The show was easily a third or more smaller than it had been in the years before the pandemic. Much of the gap was due to the absence of Chinese tackle manufacturers who are still not traveling widely (maybe because of restrictions, maybe because they are just too damn busy).

I was slightly surprised/disappointed to find that there were considerably fewer small startup companies with the various gimmicks that, in the past, I have marveled at someone thinking was the foundation of a sound business model. There are still a few: a rod company that is making rods with an ergonomic handle, like a camel’s hump in the reel seat, that is shaped like a snake head, and a guy who is making daisy chains for trolling tuna that have hooks in every teaser head. I didn’t have the heart to tell the guy it looked like an airlift to the hospital in the making to me.

Most shocking in the survivors department: the Huck bucket and its $110 price tag, which I laughed and laughed and laughed at five years ago, is still there, still just making that absurdly expensive bucket with no particularly unique features — and still, apparently, selling quite a few of them.

In terms of new tackle, the show this year was really all about soft plastics. The number of companies that are now manufacturing hyper-realistic rubber and plastic baits is almost as mind-boggling as the level of realism that many of them are producing.

I saw rubber lures that, if I were swimming in the water 10 feet away, would be difficult to differentiate from a real fish. There are trout imitations in every species you can imagine (these are for catching musky or big largemouths, I’m assuming), there are tiny 1-inch to 4-inch minnow patterns that you could throw onto your cutting board with the real McCoys and be hard-pressed to pick out the fakes, and there are so many mullet-shad-bunker imitations that are just spectacular looking.

There was the best looking rubber eel imitation I have ever seen — by Savage Gear. The problem is, they are roughly 10 times more expensive than a real live eel and I doubt would hold up much better in the mouth of a few striped bass.

The hyper-realistic rubber stuff seems appealing, but I’ve always struggled to think that such detail makes a difference in our northern waters, where marine nutrients mean that the water is never crystal clear like in Florida. And the threat of bluefish destroying an $8 or $10 or $20 rubber imitation just makes tying one on around here an unnecessarily risky investment.

The new Van Staal reels, the VSX-2, were the highlight of the show for Northeast surfcasters. The new models — which have one-piece frames, ditch the outer spool cup and are geared much tighter, no play in the anti-reverse (which I never really noticed anyway) — will be out this fall. The company will keep making replacement parts for the current reels for another 10 years.

Here’s the other new gear that I thought would be especially useful for South Fork anglers:

The KastKing waterproof floating 110-pound digital scale. This major fish weighing device is already on the market, but with a chintzy metal hook that is basically useless for weighing big striped bass. Starting next year, however, it will be available with a heavy duty jaw clamp that looks like a must-have.

There are a number of great pliers being made now. Gamakatsu has a new model out that combines razor-sharp cutter, split-ring nose tab on the needle nose and rings for tightening down your knots.

As someone who fishes on other people’s boats a lot but likes to make sure I have the gear I would expect to have on my own boat, I loved the open-topped tackle bags from Evolution. The open top just makes sense to me, since the boxes are keeping out the moisture, etc., anyway, and don’t need a zip-flap that just gets in the way.

There’s a company called Opah that is an inflatable boat maker, but they are now also making insulated fish bags out of the same rubber as their dinghies. The bags are well made with YKK zippers and interior stitching so it doesn’t fray, and run about 20 percent less than the Reliable and Canyon brand bags.

I spent much of one afternoon at the Seaguar booth, which had a line testing machine — just tying knots and comparing their breaking strengths. It was highly educational. Yes, the FG knot is by far the strongest bring-to-mono connection there is, and I will never use anything else again. But the most important takeaway was that with most knots, I was shown, NOT cinching them down tightly by hand when they are tied proved significantly stronger than pulling the knots all the way tight.

This may have your head spinning, so let me explain.

Take a typical improved clinch knot, my go-to in attaching a snap or hook in most applications. When I took my loops, brought the tag back through and pulled the knot down to the swivel eye, if I just tightened the knot enough that the loops sat against each other and the knot was symmetrical, it broke at 10 to 15 percent higher weight than if it was cinched down, rock solid, at the outset.

This blew me away — but the Seaguar employees said that it is well understood that allowing the knot to cinch down on itself gradually under the pressure of a battle will cause less damage to the fluorocarbon.

So, there, your lesson for the day.

I’d like to thank the East Hampton Sportsmen’s Alliance for having me and Al Goldberg to their monthly meeting this week. They are a nice group of guys doing some great community outreach on behalf of hunters and fishermen. Check out their website, ehsportsmen.com, and on Instagram at @easthamptonsportsmensalliance to see what they are doing for outdoorsmen next.

Catch ’em up, everyone. See you out there.