Review of the NB Sportsman Show

This past weekend was the three day NB Sportsman show, held in Moncton. Much thanks to fellow kayak angler Craig Cochrane for coming with me for the weekend and helping out, without Craig I would not have been able to pull this off!

Here is an album with pictures from our booth and from around the entire show. These pictures do not do the event justice as they cover only a small portion of the hundreds of booths at the show, but hopefully they give an idea of some of the great presentations and products that were available to attendees.



In our booth we had both the new Old Town NEXT kayak/canoe hybrid, and the Old Town Predator XL on display. The Predator we have is the one with the utility console, and it will be given away in August at the Hammond River Classic!

Throughout the event we accomplished several things:

• Introduced the sport of kayak fishing to thousands of people.
• Promoted our derbies held later in the summer
• Promoted the heck out of the Old Town Predator XL and NEXT, and I suspect helped to sell numerous boats throughout the weekend.
• Promoted many of the great products that our various sponsors donated to the events.   Of note the Railblaza C-TUG, Yak Attack BlackPak, Scotty Canoe Clamp, Grappler Anchor, LineCutterz Ring, and SonarPhone all raised more than one eyebrow!   
• Sold tickets on and gave away Denali Rod, which helped cover some of the costs of the weekend trip.
• Promoted the sport of sturgeon fishing which is a treasure of a resource in our area.
• Promoted my own service of guided kayak fishing.   
• Met with the Pure Fishing team who I look foward to working with throughout the year
• Met several key players in the fishing industry here in Atlantic Canada, many of which I'll be touching base with again soon on some great initiatives!

Now that this big weekend is over, I'll need to take some time this week to recover and and then write a number of e-mails updating our sponsors, connect with some of those I met over the weekend, and so forth.  

Oh, I seen a touch of open water on Darlings Lake on the way back yesterday, we could have open rivers in 2 weeks!

Heading to the NB Sportsman Show!

Tomorrow is the start of the 3 day NB Sportsman Show, a huge event covering all things boating, fishing, hunting, archery and so forth!   Thousands of people will attend this event every day, and I've been asked to run a booth to promote both kayak and sturgeon fishing! 

Together with a couple of other dedicated kayak anglers, plus a few who will drop by here and there through the weekend to help out, we will have a fantastic time promoting our sport to countless anglers who may not have yet considered fishing from kayak. 

On display we will have the Old Town Predator XL with the Utility Console, a kayak we will be giving away a the Hammond River Classic later in the summer!    We will also have the new Old Town NEXT canoe/kayak hybrid.    These are two fantastic boats, brand new on the market suited to two different audiences, and should appeal to a very wide variety of people.   It will be great promotion not only for Old Town, but also Ecological Adventures and Outdoors NB, two local retailers who sell these great products.  We may even sell the NEXT right at the show!

We will also have banners and products on display from a whole host of companies who have been very generous in their support of the kayak fishing community.   Rods, tackle, clothes, kayak accessories, paddles and more will all be on display at the show to promote these great companies.    All these items will then be given away later in the summer at one of our two paddling derbies!

In addition to promoting the sport, the derbies and those companies who have given their support, I'll also promote the recreational sturgeon fishery we have here in New Brunswick, which is the only one of it's kind not only in Eastern Canada but in all of North America!     We have a treasure of a resource here that needs to be respected and protected, but also enjoyed which I'm thrilled to educate people on!    I've put together a few custom sturgeon rigs which I'll sell at the show, but I only had the materials to spare to make 5, so those should go fairly quickly!

Finally, I'll also be taking advantage of the situation to promote my own little venture of guided recreational kayak fishing.   I'll offer certificates for full and half day outings in case anyone wants to purchase one as a gift, and take bookings directly should anyone wish to make one.   To help promote this, I'll give away a couple of half day certificates throughout the show.

Put all this together and we will have a lot to discuss with any attendee who is interested!   Aside from discussing all these topics, we will also:

• Accept registrations for each of the paddling derbies, and also sell additional tickets on the kayak draws
• Have a brand new high end fishing rod up for raffle, in hopes of making a few dollars to help cover our expenses over the weekend.
• Give away a couple of half day guided kayak outings by drawing from submitted business cards.
• Sell certificates and accept bookings for guided kayak outings.

Stay tuned for updates on how the weekend went, it should be a blast!