Kalyn Hoggard | Monday, 26 January 2026
The fly fishing expo season is in full swing. Simultaneously, someone up in Northern Manitoba decided to fire up the MEGA air conditioning unit and blasted us with the frigid fan for the last week. The wind chill had the northern states down into negative double-digit temperatures for a few days. I had the joy of attending a fly fishing show here in Wisconsin over the weekend. I arrived at the show around 7 am, and as I got out of my car the phone said that with the wind chill it felt like -39 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Luckily, I didn’t have to walk far, and I wasn’t carrying much with me. Interesting fun fact about -39 degree feels like temperatures, to me they don’t feel much different than 9 degree feels like temperatures. I’m not exactly sure at what temperature it is, but once things go beyond, “Wow that refreshing,” and into icicle nose hairs, and “My GOD man I need to run to the door,” you enter the Indoor Time. The Indoor Time doesn’t usually last too long up here. We usually get a few weeks of these sorts of temperatures during the winter months.
This show was aptly named “Cabin Fever Day.” There were some local shops, artists, guides, rod builders, and a used gear section, (there should be more fly swap meets) but overall it was a relatively small show. I was there hanging out with a rod company, and to my surprise there was an enormous empty room adjacent to the show that was available for indoor casting. I bet you can guess what I spent most of my time doing. Given that the show was relatively slow, and that my partner in crime had the booth duties under control, I determined it was proper advertising for me to grab the lowest end model of rod that the company offered, strapped a MED to it, and played around.Marty and I had plenty of time after setting up and before the expo began to get diagonal in the room and let her rip a few times. Corner to corner casting we were getting enough backcast space to throw around 110 footers. I ran through some comp accuracy using squares on the concrete floor, and I got some comp distance work in even though my backcast space was limited. I consider it to have been a pretty solid practice day. Even more so when you consider the temperatures outside.
Fly Show atmospheres are interesting. I have a bad habit of people watching and observing how people interact with one another. Maybe I’m still trying to figure out what it means to behave. The show people are nerds about fly fishing, but all in their own unique way. Obviously, you have the hardcore fisher people and guides. You have the fundraiser, organization, and conservation people that hosted the event. Occasionally you will find caster people tucked away in a corner casting. Fly tying is becoming a bigger group it seems, and they always send a feather and fur trader. Peddlers of retail equipment are their own group but tend to dabble in at least one other group seriously. Let us not forget the purpose of the whole thing, you also have the average fly consumer walking about lingering longer with his group than the others. The cool kids are the ones that are part of all the groups, but few people have that kind of time I suppose.
My sitting place was between the booth I was tending and a gentleman that was to be giving the fly casting lessons at the show on behalf of the Trout Unlimited group that was hosting the event. He had quite a few poster boards explaining some beginner stuff, and a few proper FFI type of mechanics diagrams. Hand drawn, and they weren’t bad. Unfortunately, he did not get the chance to make a good impression, but it looked like he could cast ok and he was teaching in the horizontal, which I can get with.
The industry wouldn’t get behind this in any kind of way, but stories of Bill Gammel make me think about this every time I’m at a show. As the stories go, when Bill was still going to shows and casting, he would carry around a cheap ($150) rod and would prove the good caster point every where he was invited to do so. Similar to what I do when I am at a show standing for a rod company, “If I can cast their cheapest model like this, then imagine how you might cast their high-end models.” The gut spoiling truth is the hidden meaning behind what I’m doing, and I suspect Bill was as well. “Hey mostly everyone, I can save you time, money, and frustration. Put down that $1000 rod that I just watched you cast, spend a couple hundred dollars on lessons with me and become a beginner caster. After that you can waste your money however you like, but please get beneficial use out of some of the money you are spending on our sport.” The sentiment behind that isn’t intended to be arrogant or mean or anything like that at all. Audacious consumerism does not get you far with a fly rod, but good luck.
I’m guessing every sport has its instructors and coaches that should be more appropriately utilized; golf comes to mind. It is also perfectly fine with me that people spend their money however they see fit, but I was minding my business casting in the spacious room at the show. I watched people cast one rod, then another, and develop some sort of opinion of one over the other. I really have no idea how they could appropriately judge the two rods against each other, and it got me thinking about the industry. Specifically, it had me thinking about the evolution of fly lines, the ever-present race to the fastest possible rod, and how it pays to cater to the average (poor casting) consumer, but that would be a digression too far.
It did however lead me to an idea. Ok, hear me out. If you can’t cast well enough to keep an enormous amount of slack out of the line, then you can’t possibly feel what is going on with the rod. If you can’t feel the difference between two rods, then you can’t make a good decision on which rod to buy. If you base your decision on Name, Warranty, or Price, then you may end up spending way more money than you ought to. Now, you might be able to rabbit hole your way into a decent decision with the internet, a target species in mind, and well written fly rod shootouts, but if you are too lazy to practice and too lazy to do the research, then boy do I have a service for you.
I think shows should let me show up and charge people for on-the-fly rod reviews. Give me $20 dollars and you get three rods from various booths, and I will provide the reels, lines, and leaders. I’ll review the three rods based on whatever parameters you want to provide. “The name on this one is important to you. Ok. You need to cast a maximum of 40 feet. Ok You have no budgetary concerns. Ok. Based on the three rods you have provided and the parameters you have given me, then you should BUUUUUUUYYYY! This one. That’ll be $20. NEEEEXT!”