GoExpo Fishing Fair 2013 in Helsinki
I was again working at the Helsinki Spey Clave stand during the fair. This year we had invited Mikael Frödin to tie his beautiful tubeflies at our stand and also Tommy Aarkvisla from C.F. Burkheimer pro team to do casting demos on the pool.
As usual the fair had pretty good turnout and it was great to catch up with fly fishing friends that came to the show. Micke always draws a big crowd so we had some good buzz at the stand when he was tying flies. He has some new materials coming to the Salar Salmon Series very soon and was excited about the new glow tube on F.I.T.S.. Håkan Norling was also demonstrating the Guideline rods and lines with his massive set of demo gear.
It was a true pleasure to meet and spend time with Tommy who is a skillful caster and instructor. I didn’t have time to watch the casting demos that much but I’m sure that many visitors left the fair with a healthy dose of new casting info. I’ll be watching closely on the results of Spey-O-Rama this year where I’m sure Tommy will place on the top podium.
As promised we also had the Bug Launcher Challenge accuracy competition and had some Finnish actors and celebrities competing with the visitors. All the profits from the competition are going straight to salmon conservation. The winner was Dmitri Borovkov from Estonia who’s been regularly showing Finn’s how to cast in our competitions. He’s a great fly tyer as well I might add.
Another pleasant meeting was with Tim Volk, the product manager from Waterworks-Lamson, who had come to see what the Finnish fair is like. Great guy and because he spent most of the weekend with us at our stand and the after party I had plenty of time to chat about the reels and fishing with him. I only have one of their reels the ULA Force in use but the new Speedster has been staring at me in Spey Clave’s reel cabinet and I have to consider taking it with me this summer to the river.
