By Pete Robbins – Half Past First Cast

Pro Staff Directors, Marketing Managers and Tackle Company Moguls, I’m talking to you:

As a longtime member of the fishing media as well as a consultant to several successful fishing lodges, I think that I’m uniquely situated to tell you why you need to bring your pro staff together at a fishing lodge – with or without media. I’ve been to a number of these events and have observed others carefully. I’ve seen some that worked, others that failed, and I’ve heard both the positive and negative feedback from all parties involved. Done properly, one of these gatherings can jumpstart your media campaigns and build brand knowledge and loyalty that a paycheck alone does not provide.

Here are my reasons:

Some Pro-Staffers are Tough to Corral – It’s not limited to veterans, or rookies, or those with young children, but I hear from pro-staff managers all the time about sponsored anglers who seem to shirk every possible get together, or somehow cut short their appearances at boat shows and the like. Some of those guys may be great when they actually show up. If you go to a remote lodge in Mexico, Alaska or some location that they cannot easily drive away from, you have them “trapped.” If it’s a place where the service, food and fishing are great, they may even enjoy it. Once they’re on site, you have their complete attention for a predetermined amount of time.

Product Testing – Several years ago, Hanna booked a group from Daiwa, including engineers from Japan, a videographer, and top pros Brent Ehrler and Ish Monroe, for a trip to El Salto. Their purpose was to go through some prospective products and evaluate them in great detail. What do you need in order to do that? Not just an opportunity to sequester your staff, but also a place where they’re going to get lots of bites from hard-fighting fish in situations that’ll stress rods and reels. Watching them every day at lunchtime filling out forms and discussing minutiae, I could tell they got their money’s worth.

Product Knowledge – If you’re going to give your staffers a chance to try about-to-be-introduced products and to gain the knowledge to describe them accurately, again, you need to do two things: (1) Describe accurately what makes the products different than the last generation and better than the competition; and (2) Put them in a place where they can truly test them out. The former can be done over drinks (I’ve also seen it done in a classroom setting) and the latter needs to be done on a place where bites are plentiful.

Media Awareness – For the same reasons given above, you need to be able to explain to the media why your new products are relevant. Face it, the flood of press releases and pre-ICAST promotional materials all blend into each other. By putting the gear in the hands of the people who will write about it, you can answer both on-the-record and off-the-record questions. Be sure that you give them something to take home, both the gear itself and some sort of swag. If they fly in, offer to ship it to their home to make sure it gets there.

Media Relationships – Even if you don’t have a specific product to introduce, by allowing media to get to know your pros better, it means they’re more likely to call them for help. The first media event I attended was organized by Pete Gluszek and held at Lake Cobbosseecontee, Maine in 2007. I might never have met some of those pros but for spending time in the boat with them there, and I’ve maintained great working relationships with several of them over the past 14 years.

Media Production – If you need content for YouTube, your website, or other social media channels, a trip to a place that’s loaded with fish allows you to gather enough for a year in a single week.

A Note on Cost — Obviously these trips can get expensive in a hurry, often prohibitively so. Going longer distances likely increases your costs, although it decreases the chances that your pros or media will “escape.” One way to reduce the out-of-pocket expenses is to engage in a tradeout with the lodge. They may need rods or lures or electronics to get them through the year, and you can establish a dollar-for-dollar trade of gear for trips. That serves the added bonus of putting your gear in the hands of people with disposable income to spend on fishing trips – which could boost sales. Another way to reduce your cost is to combine efforts with other companies who are under the same umbrella but not direct competitors. For example, there are rep groups who deal with SPRO, Gamakatsu and AFTCO who’ve managed to engage in a “three for the price of one” effort.

And Advice for the Lodges and Outfitters:

Give Out Merchandise – Even if it’s a tackle company or clothing company running the show, your lodge or outfitting service should distribute swag to writers and anglers – hats, shirts, etc. With the former group, they might end up writing about your location specifically (or at least mentioning it) and with the latter group you never know when your logo will show up on TV, in a magazine or on the web.

Use Photos in Your Advertising – With the anglers’ and the sponsoring company’s permission, your operation can gain additional traction by showcasing pics of fishing “influencers” holding up big fish at your property. Grosse Savanne is one of our favorite US locations, and they’ve benefitted greatly by their association with pros like Bill Lowen and television stars like Mark Zona.

A Few Additional Notes:

Need Not Be a Formal Fishing Lodge – One of the best media events I’ve attended was a Shimano/G.Loomis get-together in Lower Alabama in 2014. They rented a large house at a residential country club and brought in a chef to cater to us. None of us had ever heard of the place, but it had an incredible several hundred acre private lake (electric motor only) that clearly hadn’t received much intelligent fishing pressure. It was loaded with giants – our group caught several double digits despite unusually adverse weather. In fact, a freak ice storm shut down the Pensacola airport and the highway to it, and most of us were “stranded in paradise” for a few extra days.

Need Not Be Your Primary Species – Obviously, if you’re a tackle company focused primarily on bass fishing, the lion’s share of your media efforts need to focus on bass (duh). That doesn’t mean that you can’t send some of your staffers off in search of other targets. A flipping stick that can tame 40 pound redfish or 150 pound yellowfin tuna will likely hold up during tournament competition.

One of the most productive trips I’ve taken was when Keith Combs and I went to Alaska (a state which has no viable bass fishery) in the summer of 2019. While we weren’t able to promote his sponsors directly, the “fish out of water” angle enabled me to get him much more press than I would have on a bass fishing trip – including exposure in Texas Monthly, a fly fishing publication and a saltwater publication, along with the usual bass outlets.

If you’d like more FREE advice on how to arrange a proper pro staff outing or media gathering, hit me up by email any time and we can flesh out your needs and the solutions to your specific situation.