We touched down in back in Missoula this week after a week on the road on the East Coast. Snowpack is good right now on the Mountains and my drift boat. The season is 6 weeks out from our first March launch and we still have Seattle and California on the travel schedule this month.
The fly fishing industry is a small connected group that gets minuscule when it boils down to the operators that go on the road to sell during the winter season. I end up touching base with industry friends as much as meet new guests on the trade show floor. When a love of fishing mixes with the traveling salesman culture it creates a lively bunch who I thoroughly enjoy and provides many a deep laugh for me.
A new addition to the fly fishing road crew is my cousin who is now is the head fly designer for Scientific Anglers. Josh is an incredibly talented young man who has combined a high powered engineering degree with a love of fishing. I started fishing with Josh when he was 12 years old. He was an exceptional caster and angler at that age and has honed his innate on the water skill with over a decade of fishing all over the world. Scientific Anglers lines cast so well because of this combination of knowledge and experience.
I stopped by Josh’s booth during break in the action on the floor to touch base on family and fishing. During our conversation he told me a story of known thief wh0 attends this particular show to steal from the exhibitors. Josh was warned to watch for this guy because display fly lines can disappear quickly if you aren’t watching closely. I am not selling products at the show, so it wasn’t a concern for me. However, it did make for a funny story of trying to pretend to explain the benefits of a new fly line to a show attendee while the thief is manuevering to steal that same product. Josh told me he had a picture of the fellow as a reference. I got called back to my booth, so at the time I didn’t get a chance to see the mug shot.
If you have done a particular show long enough you will start to recognize a few of the attendees. They have two particular qualities that keeps memory sharp. Almost always they have kooky look. There is a fellow who looks exactly like a human mole and another one who wears his buff pulled up at all times. They also greatly enjoy cornering you in the booth with odd questions at the primetime sales time slot that while exhibiting the sheer will of never ending a conversation. We call them black holes, because they never book a trip and you can lose hours to them in a place of no time or reason. You could have groups stacked behind them trying to get information on your trip, and they still won’t disengage to make room for anyone else. When I was younger I would ride it out thinking I could manufacture a sale, but after a few years of missing connections with other anglers I have become short and decisive in curtailing my interactions with the black hole crowd. My relationship with the reoccurring time sucks has suffered but our sales have gone up, so I am comfortable with that social trade. When I have a new member of our staff with me at the show I try to lure a black hole into the booth as comedic relief and a sales lesson. It is lesson that won’t easily be forgotten.
One of the most memorable black holes at the Edison Fly Fishing Show is an odd fellow who is a dead ringer for comedian Weird Al Yankovich. He actually is a nice enough fellow, but he noticeably won’t look me in the eye while calmly and quickly shifting throughout the booth scanning all edges while keeping me engaged. In his polished shady way our conversations used to be longer in duration, but over the years it has turned into a hand wave and a quick joke about “When are you coming to Montana?” and his response is always “As soon as I win the lottery.” I thought our interactions had diminished due to an incident when a few years ago I cut him short to answer an inquiry from a client trying to book an actual trip, but I was wrong. Turns out I needed more fishing gear on display.
My cousin Josh came back to my booth later in the show and we had time to review the photos of the thief we had laughed about earlier. Apparently the body double for Weird Al Yankovich was a known consumer of time as well as product. Josh proudly told a story about how he fended off the burglary attempts while explaining all the new technology in the 2018 Scientific Anglers fly lines.
I quickly checked to see if I still had my wallet. Weird Al is a master black hole.
