Well Ang and I recently made another trip across the pond to England for another crack at letting the Britt’s know just how great a Carp resource that Ontario has to offer. This time we headed to Manchester at the Northern Angling Show.
After a seemingly quick 5 ½ hour night-flight from Toronto to London, we then caught a smaller aircraft to Manchester. The toughest part of this trip is trying to sleep on the Toronto – London leg. Boarding a plane at 10pm and knowing we are landing around 8am puts a head game on you when you “know” that you have to find some time to try and get even a little shut-eye.
I believe I actually did get a bit of sleep, however, whenever I looked over to Ang’s seat, he was heavy into his car race game on his tablet… the guy is insanely hard core!
Friday morning was set up day at the show. We have 3 backdrops and let me tell you, Ontario did it right with these babies. 2 people can slap these up in no time. Our biggest worry was getting our DVD player and TV synced up, always worrying about PAL vs NTSC. I guess those days are gone, as it seemingly doesn’t matter… all worked well.
Saturday and Sunday (the show days) went very well. This is a somewhat smallish venue, as compared to our Canadian Sportsman shows, but I’ll tell you what, they pumped almost 6,000 enthusiastic Carp fanatics through each day.
The beauty of these shows is twofold. Displays like our Ontario booth garner lots of interest from the locals, while retail booths, selling all the latest and greatest fishing gear, literally have lineups for the first 4+ hours of each day. It is cash only and the vendors are raking in full tilt all day long.
It’s a refreshing site being among the hustle and bustle of people eagerly moving from booth to booth, all anticipating the upcoming fishing season and how they can one-up and better the season before!
