Icast 2023 Recap
Icast, the fishing industry event held here in Orlando, Florida each year is a long-awaited event for fishing insiders, company representatives, and media representatives alike. Each year this is where many companies will unveil or release new products. For me however, it’s a week of guide trips mostly for industry people from all over the world.
This year’s Icast week was no different as the week started off with a group trip for Rapala! I’ve been involved with this trip for two years now and have made some awesome friendships in the process. This year I had Chris Hockley of Rapala and Pierre of VMC France. The day couldn’t have gone any better as we started off catching fish almost immediately and would go on to boat several fish in the 6lb class, all of which were Pierre’s, and this would make for his new PB Largemouth Bass; Pierre had the hot hand that day! Almost all the bass we caught were landed on Rapala’s new “Crush City” line of plastics and for us the “Mayor” swimbait on a VMC heavy duty weighted willow hook being thrown around hydrilla beds.
The very next day was the Icast Cup, a tournament held at the beginning of Icast week each year which provides media representatives a chance to get on the water for some article or photography material. It’s a fun tournament that has an early weigh in of 10:30 to avoid the oppressive summertime Fl heat. This year I fished the cup on team CPF Lures with great friends Scott McIver, who is a fellow CPF lures teammate and company representative Jason George. We started on an offshore shell bed on the south end of Lake Toho where we would boat our initial limit of fish, unfortunately just nothing of any size. From there we did what I do best, flipping. Jason would land our biggest of the day a swim jig tipped with a CPF Lures “wobbler” being slowly swam through the Kissimmee grass. We finished the tournament in 10th place with a three fish limit of a little over 10lbs, pretty solid for only a few hours however the winning team had a three fish limit of 17lbs! Lake Toho sure puts out some incredible fish!
After a couple days of going to the Icast show, my week was concluded with a very special trip for me. The guys from Geecrack Japan along with my great friend Kazuki Kitajima of Geecrack and Hayabusa Fishing went out to test a few new Geecrack lures and test them we did! We got on an offshore line of hydrilla that was absolutely loaded with big hungry bass. The bait of choice was the Geecrack bellows gill swimmer on a weighted swimbait hook. The technique was simple, throw the swimmer up onto the thicker hydrilla, slowly reel it back and wait for the “thump”! This swimmer has an excellent swim with a slightly larger bream shaped profile, and it definitely seemed to entice the larger fish out of that heavy cover.
Icast week is a week that I look forward to each year, the memories and friendships made are lasting and at the end of the day, that’s what fishing is all about!
