This past Saturday I headed across the street to a very nice local fishing show. The shows put on by the Huron Valley Sportfishing club on the grounds of the Monroe County Fair grounds in their brand new expo center. This was the 4th year of the event, and it was extremely enjoyable.
The nice thing about this show is its size it’s one of the smaller events which means it has a more intimate feel to it. I ran into so many of my outdoors friends and I also made a few new ones. There was a few companies that caught my eye.
One was Ice Darter fishing Lures. This company ran by Jay Nieman from If -N-When Fishing Charters. Jim has some of the nicest looking jigging baits I have seen in a while. They are hand-built here in Michigan. They come in two sizes the smallest one is has heavy has a #7 
Jigging Rap but in a little shorter package, and the larger size follow suit as well, it’s the same weight has a # 9 Jigging Rap. Jim also let me in on that next year he will have a tungsten ice jig hitting the market also. I am really looking forward to seeing them when they do. Visit their site to see there full-line of lures. www.icedarter.net
The other company that caught my eye is out Perrysburg, OH. Economical Bass Baits, now don’t let that name fool you. These baits are very high quality, they even had a hard to find color in bass tubes “bubble gum” I spent some time chatting with them. I will have more on this company later in the year. As we talked about getting together and doing some fishing this year. They do have a Goby bait in the works also, I can’t wait to see how this one looks when it comes out.
There was a lot of charter captions in the building also. The event had them from just about every part of the state it seemed and few from Ohio. But there was one Captain that caught my eye. Dr Bugs Charters ran by Capt. Dave Spangler. He has a very economical charter he offers for the month of April it is just $75 a head for the month of April. April is maybe the best month to hit up Erie for that fish of a lifetime. So give Capt Dave a call if you’re in the market for a trip this spring.
The show also had some very good seminars also. I sat in on two of them. The 1st one I listen to was by Capt Lance Valentine from Walleye 101. Lance was talking about Jigging for walleye in the Detroit River. He has a unique approach to teaching people all about fishing the river. Listen to him you can see that he follows the KISS rule and there is no BS in his approach. He teaches you all the things you need to know to produce fish daily on the river. He even has a DVD series. When get the DVD it includes some of his GPS waypoints. You will see him fishing those very spots during the spring. If you haven’t checked out a seminar by Lance I would recommend it.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVfUd3Jh8LA]
The other seminar I sat in on was the Center Pinning Steelhead Ally with Guide Jim Chamberlin. Jim runs “Fish with Jim Outfitters“. Center Pinning is something I have never done and I knew little about it. But after listening to Jim, it got me thinking about maybe I should add this method to my bag of tricks. He also explained in great detail about different float designs and how to use the shot on your line. I picked up a few things that I can not wait to try on the rivers this spring.If you can catch him at his seminars you can buy his DVD “Fishing With Jim Steelhead Alley” from his website.
