Last weekend Amanda and I had the opportunity to represent Buckeye Kayak Fishing Trail at this years Paddlefest event held at Coney Island. We set up our booth Saturday morning around 7am and awaited our first visitors. At our booth we displayed the BKFT tournament info for that day, the Wilderness Systems Ride 115x that BKFT will be raffling off at the end of the year, stickers and info from our sponsors, our new BKFT Jerseys, the Angler of the Year plaque, and various trophies for BKFT events.
I was amazed to see just how many young people approached the booth wanting to know how to get involved. There were multiple occasions when a family would walk up and the father would start talking about how his son wanted to get into kayak fishing. We'd share a few stories from the tournaments, talk fishing, show off a few pictures, and told them to stop by our next event.
As the evening progressed we drew closer to the measure in for the BKFT's tournament. A few of the people that we had talked to throughout the day stopped by and checked out the process of measuring in fish. It was a process that many people were new to and a tournament based off of pictures seemed far fetched to them. This wasn't the bassmaster classics where guys where driving in on boats and holding up their catch, rather just a bunch of guys relaxed and talking about their day of fishing while they patiently awaited their turn to submit their photos onto a laptop. At 3pm we had the stage to ourselves, this is where we gathered our anglers and announced the results. By 3:30 everyone had recieved money for placing in the top ten or received a raffle prize provided by the main event sponsor Hook1. There were also Backwater Hand Paddles and Yak Attack gear raffled off....all in all everyone walked home with a raffle prize!
Later in the evening we got our hands on a "Meet Me Outdoors: The Outdoor Guide to the Tri-State", an annual publication on everything outdoors. (Check it out at www.meetmeoutdoors.com) After talking about the publication with a few of the other exhibitors I faintly remembered writing an article with Neil for this publication. I flipped through the pages and sure enough I found our article.
The rest of the evening was spent talking to the anglers and to a few guests who stopped by as we were packing up the booth. It was a long day, but we had a blast. We got to share our passion with others and even listened to others as they shared their passion with us, whether it be photography, hiking, whitewater kayaking, etc... we all had similar interest and could relate to one another. If you didnt get the chance to head down this year, I would definately reccomend checking it out next year!
The full article in Meet Me Outdoors can be found HERE on page 46 in the magazine or page 48 in the digital copy.
-Sean Stone
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