My first trip to the Fred Hall Fishing Tackle and Boat Show years and years ago as a youngster felt a lot like my first wondrous trip to the big top. No lions, tigers, acrobats or even clowns, but all that the show had to offer a kid who loved fishing, hiking, boating, exploring and just about anything that got me into nature was an overwhelming experience that I will never forget.
If you live in Long Beach, or just about anywhere else in Southern California, and like me you love the outdoors, there is only one place to be this weekend. That may sound like an advertisement, but I can’t speak highly enough about the Fred Hall Show, which it is at the Long Beach Convention Center and Long Beach Arena for the next three days.
A few years after my first trip to the annual mega outdoor show in Long Beach, I visited the show with my dad and a guy we both worked for named Joe Kruss in search of a summer fishing trip. Kruss and my dad, who worked together moving heavy machinery since the 1950s, had taken a few highly successful fishing trips to Alaska and to the Arctic Circle. And that upcoming summer in the early 1980s, it was going to be my turn to go with them.
The show features over 3,000 displays, including fishing and outdoor gear manufacturers and retailers as well as hundreds of boat displays. However, what brought me, my dad and Joe to the show was the myriad outfitters and outdoor travel booths representing destinations in Alaska, Canada, the Western U.S., Mexico and Central America.
The three of us ultimately settled on a trip to an exclusive fishing camp about an hour’s floatplane flight north of Anchorage, where the measure of success was not whether you caught your limit of fish, but how many casts you threw your lure without catching a fish. Rarely did I cast more than three or four times and bring my lure in sans 6-, 7- or 8-pound lake trout, an acrobatic Arctic grayling, a rainbow trout or a lean and ferocious northern pike. One day a fly-fisherman in a stream along side the three of us, who had opted for spin tackle that day, boasted a stunning success: 27 casts, 27 rainbow trout. Each fish weighed well into the teens, and some exceeded 20 pounds.
That week in Alaska was the first of many summer excursions to exotic fishing destinations to bring home trophies like a 28-pound lake trout from Victoria Island in Canada’s Northwest Territories, a 160-pound halibut caught a off the coast of Juneau, Alaska, and my prize—a 23-pound reddish-orange Arctic Char I landed on 12-pound test line after a 45-minute fight in a portion of the world where it says light 22 hours a day during the summer.
The 65th annual Fred Hall Show has over 400 seminars. The show stage also features talks by fishing tournament champions, and daily seminars on various topics such as surf fishing and how to handle big fish. Attractions include free trout fishing for kids, and an audience favorite, the Dock Dogs Challenge.
Doors open 2 p.m. today and the show ends at 9:30 p.m. Saturday’s hours are 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., and the show runs from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is $15 for adults, $14 for seniors and children age 16 and under are free.