Hey, Keith here.

Last week I flew to Orlando for ICAST, the biggest fishing tackle trade show on the planet, and one bait was everywhere I looked.

The urchin.

Picture a small, round soft plastic covered in dozens of spiny little legs.

It looks strange, but this thing was so hot it produced winners in three separate award categories, including Rapala's CrushCity "The CEO" 21, which won an award in the Freshwater Soft Lure category.

Trust me, these baits will be showing up at your local pond soon, and I'll tell you all about them.

But that's not all I have to say about ICAST. Today, I'm sharing my whole trip, including one boat that surprised me and four new products worth a bank angler's money.

This was my second year attending ICAST, and I've come to a conclusion: If you're serious about the fishing industry in any way, you need to find a way to get there.

Every major brand in fishing sets up under one roof for three days.

You can freely walk up and talk with anyone, from the marketing folks to the product designers themselves, and you can even schedule meetings in advance.

If you're a YouTube or social media content creator, the show is worth its weight in gold. This is where big deals are made and sponsorships are struck.

Same goes if you compete in tournaments. There's no better place to network with brands face-to-face, and plenty of sponsorship relationships start right there on the show floor.

You won't find that kind of access anywhere else in this sport.

Now, let me walk you through my trip.

My flight landed in Orlando around 10:00 a.m. Tuesday, and luckily the Rosen Centre let me check in early.

If you ever attend, that's the hotel to book. It sits directly across the street from the Orange County Convention Center, where the whole show takes place. You can walk to everything.

Tuesday was the "On the Water" demo day, where companies set up booths along the big lake in front of the convention center. Instead of just looking at new products, you get to actually use them.

That's where I climbed aboard the new Ventral inflatable kayak.

The whole thing weighs 35 pounds and collapses down into a long bag you can carry. The motor drops down through the center of the hull, and between the foot pedals and the handheld remote, I had great control over the boat.

What surprised me most was the stability. I stood up on the body with no problem. Then I stood up on the chair. Still solid.

That night, all credentialed media were invited to the New Product Showcase preview to view next year's tackle and vote on the Best of Show awards.

I walked that room with one question in mind: What new innovation does ICAST have for the angler fishing on foot?

The answer was "not much," but four products passed the test.

Out of everything I saw at the showcase, these four earned a spot on this list. 

This one won the whole show. The Rhino 2-Piece Spinning Combo was named the overall Best of Show winner after first taking the Rod and Reel Combo category, and I love what that says about where the industry is headed. 

In a showcase packed with increasingly sophisticated fishing technology, voters handed the biggest award to a durable, affordable rod-and-reel combo built for a broad range of anglers. 

The rod's TriAx Core is designed for strength around the whole blank with a balanced, sensitive tip, while the reel uses Asyx Drive gearing for more torque, five ball bearings, and HydroShield seals to keep water and debris out of the gears and drag. 

For me, the two-piece design is the headline. It rides in a trunk, straps to a backpack, and shrugs off the abuse of being hauled through briars and laid on gravel banks.

If you saw one trend at ICAST 2026, it was urchin baits. The spiny, many-legged soft plastics produced winners in three separate categories, and Rapala's entry took the top spot for freshwater.

The CEO won the Freshwater Soft Lure category. The tiny 21 mm urchin-style bait uses a soft, durable plastic with a weighted glass-powder core and tapered legs designed to create subtle movement as it falls.

Neighborhood pond bass see the same Senko and Spinnerbait all year long. A compact bait that generates its own action with almost no input from you is exactly the kind of new look pressured fish haven't learned yet.

Bank anglers should throw bladed jigs more than anybody, and this new one is built for how we fish.

The Elite EVO HD is engineered to be at least 40% stronger than the original EVO, with a solid teardrop-shaped welded ring for a bulletproof line-tie connection, a reinforced head-to-blade interface, and a custom 5/0 super heavy-duty nano-coated hook. 

Storage isn't exciting until you're the one carrying everything on your back.

The Buzbe Urchin Box features custom wire-post organizers and dividers that remain locked in place, with a waterproof construction that keeps urchin baits secure, protected, and ready to fish. It won the Tackle Management category, designed specifically to hold the awkward, many-legged baits without packing them tightly together. 

If you're going to try the urchin trend from the bank, this box keeps those legs from turning into a tangled mess at the bottom of your backpack. And a waterproof box earns its keep when your tackle bag sits on wet grass all morning.