I made a really big deal last year about never having attended the ICAST show, which is the big annual convention staged by the fishing industry. Well, I attended this year’s event in Orlando, Fla., with Dave Kranz in July. I wrote a short piece about the show, and then, I got busy and I never returned to the tale.

I’ll share my thoughts over the next few weeks.

The convention was magnificent and was more I had dreamed it would be. The 55th annual ICAST was attended by 9,000 representatives from the global fishing community. It is the world’s largest sportfishing trade show. It was encouraging to learn that show attendance was up 23 percent and buyers’ attendance was 25 percent higher than last year’s show.