Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Salt Water Sportsman seminar
of Boca Raton, who is no longer involved with the seminar series, came up with the idea from fishing clinics they gave at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show.
At the time, they were both editors with Salt Water Sportsman. The boat show had asked Cunningham if he could arrange the clinics and he asked Poveromo and Sosin to do them.
“We got roped into it,” Poveromo said, laughing. “We were at Bahia Mar at the food courts. We had one little stage up there. We’d look at the bleachers and there’d be 30 people, but they were there to eat and they’d leave after they finished eating. They were not there to sit down and learn something.
“Mark said what we ought to do is a stand-alone saltwater fishing seminar. I said, ‘I think this is a great idea, why not do this as a tour and go to several different places?’ Mark and I sat down and kicked it around and went to Rip. We said we could do it under the banner of Salt Water Sportsman and he loved it. We would pick some venues, get some good teaching teams together and do it.”
Poveromo and Sosin also had to sell sponsors on underwriting the seminars, which turned out to be easier than they thought. They also wrote a Where: Coral Shores High School, Tavernier
9 a.m.-3 p.m. Jan. 28 George Poveromo and Glenn Law headline the program. Speakers include captains Shannon Attales and Ron Brack, of Islamorada; Mark Schmidt, of Key West; Jimmy Gagliardini and Jason Long, of Marathon; Diego Toiran, of the Lower Keys; George Clark Jr., of Key Largo; and Bouncer Smith, of Miami Beach.
Fishing patch reefs for snapper, groupers and mackerel; flutter-jigging ledges, wrecks, reefs and the humps; wreck fishing tactics in the Atlantic and Gulf; fishing bridges for tarpon, snook, permit and grouper; top trolling spreads; as well as tips for catching cobia, kingfish, wahoo, dolphin, tuna, bonefish, redfish and sea trout.
Tickets are $55. To pay with Visa, MasterCard and American Express, call 800-448-7360 or register online at nationalseminarseries.com. textbook for the series and the magazine heavily promoted the seminars, which were held in seven cities that initial year.
The first seminar was in Kissimmee, their thinking being that it would draw anglers from both coasts, and they were right: 711 people attended. The following week at Broward College in Coconut Creek, they had more than 1,000 people.
That success led to a second year, with the seminars visiting “pretty much the same cities,” according to Poveromo. The locations changed the following year after the magazine got “a ton of letters” from readers who wanted the seminar to come to their cities.
“Finally, around the 10th year, I’m starting to realize if we just keep this good program going and keep our faculty fresh and entertaining, this thing could go on,” Poveromo said.
And on and on and on.