ICAST 2026 Special Edition
Day 3 Floor Report

Missile Jigs Ike's Dice Jig

Category	Wired & Skirted · Missile Baits
Status	Announced ICAST debut
Show MSRP	$11.99
Specs	1/0 VMC jig hook · hand-tied rubber skirt (Grenfish Tackle, USA) · custom wire weight holder
Techniques	Urchin / Coike
Priority	P1

The headliner of Day 3 for our purposes. This is Missile's answer to the urchin craze, and it's a smart simplification: a 1/0 VMC jig hook instead of the rig-it-yourself hook decisions the original Japanese urchin baits demand, a hand-tied rubber skirt (tied in the USA by Grenfish Tackle) that provides the urchin bulk with a subtle shimmy on the fall, and a custom wire weight holder that lets you swap weights to control fall rate without retying.

Two details worth flagging. The rubber skirt material has no memory — it bulks back out after being stored flat, so it travels in a thin bag without turning into a pancake. And the wire weight holder is the same fall-rate philosophy that makes the Coike system work: match sink speed to mood. Where the Coike asks you to build the presentation, the Dice Jig hands you one assembled.

The big difference from the imports: Missile Baits has real US distribution. Of everything riding the urchin wave at this show, this is the one most likely to actually sit on a Tackle Warehouse shelf by fall.

VERDICT: BUY — first domestic urchin-style bait with better anticipated availability than the competition.

Lunkerhunt BLACK Kimera Worm — 6"

Category	Soft Plastic · BlackTusk Outdoors / Lunkerhunt
Status	Announced ICAST debut
Show MSRP	$7.29
Specs	6" body · dense tentacle head · finesse-worm tail
Techniques	Shaky head, Ned, drop shot
Priority	P2

The other half of the urchin story, and the more inventive half. Instead of a compact tentacle ball, the Kimera runs a streamlined 6" finesse worm body that transitions into a spiked head — a dense array of tentacles that pulse and flare with the slightest movement while the worm tail adds subtle disturbance behind it. It's an urchin/worm chimera, which is presumably the name.

What's interesting is the rigging math. A standard urchin bait is a hover/fall presentation. This shape reads like a shaky head, Ned head, or drop shot bait with an urchin front end — dragged, shaken, or dead-sticked, the tentacles keep working at the point of presentation even when the bait sits still. That's a different slice of the water column than the Dice Jig, not a competitor to it.

VERDICT: BUY — a new take on a crowded Coike market that shows excellent promise, and it'll be something new for the bass who've seen 100 Coikes this summer already.

El Jefe Balsa Baits "The Henry" Wake Shad

Category	Hard Bait · Limitless Fishing Brands
Status	Announced ICAST debut
Show MSRP	$17.95
Specs	4.5" · 5/8 oz · surface to 2 ft · hand-shaped balsa · built-in ball-bearing rattle
Techniques	Wakebait
Priority	P2

Timing is everything — a premium handcrafted balsa wake bait shows up on the floor right after we expanded the wakebait page to cover wake swimbaits. The Henry is a 4.5", 5/8 oz wake shad running surface to 2 feet, hand-shaped, hand-painted, and individually tank-tested one bait at a time. The spec that separates it from the mass-market wake field: a built-in ball-bearing rattle — a loud, crisp single-knock sound profile aimed at stained water, low light, and heavy cover, where most balsa wakes run silent.

Balsa buoyancy plus rattle is a genuinely uncommon combination, and the marketing checklist (grass lines, laydowns, dock pylons, riprap, open-water schools) reads like a Piedmont reservoir shoreline. At $17.95 it's priced like handcrafted balsa, which is to say fairly.

VERDICT: BUY direct at https://limitlessfishingbrands.com/collections/el-jefe-balsa-baits. Note: lure is not available at this time on the manufacturer's website. No release date available.

Missile Jigs Ike's Micro HD Football Jig

Category	Wired & Skirted · Missile Baits
Status	Announced ICAST debut
Show MSRP	$6.19
Sizes	1/4, 3/8, 1/2 oz · 2X-strong VMC hook · fine-cut skirt
Techniques	Football jig
Priority	P3

Missile's second entry of the day is quieter but solid: a micro-profile football jig built on a 2X-strong VMC hook so the small package doesn't cost you hardware when a good one eats it. Sizes run 1/4, 3/8, and 1/2 oz, with a full fine-cut skirt and a weed guard tuned to the compact head. The pitch — big bass keying on small forage — is exactly the situation on clear Piedmont reservoirs from late fall through winter, when a full-size football jig gets refused and a compact one gets crushed.

VERDICT: BUY — incremental rather than new, but micro jigs on legitimate heavy hooks are a real gap-filler.

Millennium Marine TP-200 Fixed Transducer Pole

Category	FFS Accessory · Millennium Marine
Status	Announced ICAST debut
Show MSRP	$199.99
Specs	46" aluminum mid + 20" PVC bottom · locks every 90° · included base plate · track-compatible
Priority	P3

FFS infrastructure keeps maturing. The TP-200 is a two-section transducer pole — 46" aluminum midsection over a 20" PVC bottom — that locks in every 90° in either direction via an adjustable aluminum handle, so aiming the transducer is a wrist turn instead of a wrestling match. The design detail that earns the mention: the multi-material build is meant to take an impact and flex back to true, protecting the transducer instead of transferring the hit into a $1,500 piece of electronics. It mounts on its own included base plate or drops into most track systems.

VERDICT: BUY — A solid entry at a very reasonable price from an industry icon.

Rapala Fishing Magnet

Category	Accessory · Rapala
Status	Announced ICAST debut
Show MSRP	$64.99
Kit	550 lb pull-force magnet · 65 ft nylon rope · carabiner · gloves · thread-locker · hard case
Priority	P4

Yes, that Rapala, and yes, an actual magnet-fishing kit: a 550 lb pull-force magnet on 65 feet of nylon rope with a carabiner, latex-coated gloves, thread-locker, and a hard case. The honest use case in the copy is recovery — the rod-and-reel combo that went over the gunwale, the phone at the bottom of the ramp. As a market signal it's the interesting part: when the biggest name in hard baits builds a dock-recovery kit, that's Rapala chasing the family-outing accessory dollar.

VERDICT: BUY. You’ve seen magnet fishing videos for years on the Internet. You know you want to try it. If anything, you’ll be able to recover your next lost lure.

UA BlacktipH Tide Chaser Shoe

Category	Footwear · Under Armour
Status	Announced ICAST debut
Show MSRP	$85.00
Specs	Adaptive fit system · fast-drying upper · drainage channels · sharkskin-textured EXOGRIP outsole
Priority	P4

Under Armour's fishing footwear play, built with saltwater YouTuber BlacktipH: an adaptive fit system that goes from slip-on loose to strapped-in locked, fast-drying upper, rapid drainage channels underfoot, and a sharkskin-textured EXOGRIP outsole for wet deck traction. It's a serious spec sheet for a deck shoe, and UA committing a collab to the fishing space is another mainstream-brands-moving-in data point alongside the Rapala magnet.

VERDICT: BUY — A great looking deck shoe at reasonable price.

Create-A-Lure: Competition Edition

Category	Kids' Tackle · Northern Lights Toys
Status	Announced ICAST debut
Show MSRP	$19.99
Kit	Two identical blank lures · paints · sealer · brushes · stick-on eyes · hooks · split rings
Priority	P5

Closing Day 3 with the most fun thing in the showcase. Create-A-Lure is a paint-your-own-lure kit — blank lures, paints, sealer, brushes, stick-on eyes, hooks, and split rings included — and the Competition Edition ships two identical blanks so two kids (or a kid and a dad) each paint one and settle it on the water: whose paint job catches the bigger fish. That's a genuinely clever format. A kid who painted the lure is invested in fishing it, and invested in the rematch.

VERDICT: BUY — A great way to get your kids excited about fishing. Works for big kids at heart too!