This year was my third time attending ICAST, and I have to say the experience was a lot different than it was in 2024. The first time I attended the fishing industry’s biggest trade show, I had just won the Bassmaster College Classic Bracket the previous fall and I didn’t have a single paying sponsor.
That first year, I was just trying to get my foot in the door. I was fishing the Bassmaster Opens, so I just wanted to introduce myself and meet as many people as I could.
Obviously, now my situation has changed. I have several obligations, and sponsors are asking me to attend ICAST. It has been pretty cool to learn how the show works, why the companies are there and what they’re looking for.
For me, I enjoy ICAST because it’s a bunch of like-minded people under one roof who just want to talk about fishing. That happened a lot during the show because the majority of media-related interactions I had turned into basic fishing conversations.
The most common question I got was about rigging the urchin baits, like Strike King’s new Chuker. As we’ve seen on the Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series, there are so many ways to rig it, based on whether you’re targeting largemouth, smallmouth or spotted bass.
My favorite remains the big single wacky or Neko hook. It can have some problems with lost fish, but frog hooks, trebles or quads can hook the fish in the tongue or gills, and sometimes that can be hard on the fish. You can’t have that risk in a tournament, so the single hook is best for me.
People also want to get to know more about me, like where I’m living now and my opinion of the Bassmaster Elites. I just explain fishing the Elites has been my dream forever. I’m thankful I get to fish against my heroes, I get to talk fishing with them and establish friendships with people I’ve looked up to for many years.
Overall, this year’s ICAST experience went very well, and the highlight was seeing the official debut of the Strike King FG Worm I designed. It’s been a lifetime dream to design my own lure and achieving that was one of my top bucket-list items.
I designed this worm primarily as a Neko bait, but you can also use it on a drop shot or shaky head, or you can swim it nose-hooked. The inspiration came from my Classic win in 2025 when I caught a lot of my fish on a Neko rig.
I fish that rig uniquely and, at the time, I didn’t think there was a worm exactly right for it. Everything about the FG Worm is designed to catch water. It has ribs on the body and appendages on the end, so you can hover it in really shallow water.
We worked on that bait for roughly a year, and it’s exactly what I was looking for when I approached Strike King. This bait comes in 4-inch and 5 1/2-inch sizes, and it’s definitely gonna play in our next Elite event at Lake Champlain.
