My wife and I had a booth for our fishing travel business, Half Past First Cast, at last week’s Chicagoland Fishing Expo. Despite challenging weather and one day without heat, it was a very successful show, with thousands of interested anglers and would-be anglers streaming through the doors.

As I’ve written before, I’m not a natural salesman, but I do like to talk about fishing and of course there was a lot of that to be done over the four days of the show. I told people about the trips we host in places like Alaska, Panama, Mexico and Guatemala and showed them pictures of the fish we’ve caught.

Invariably, out came the phone.

And with it came the stories.

Generally they wanted to brag about some trophy fish they’d caught or some exotic place they’d been. I’m appreciative of the passion and the importance those memories play in their lives.

Other stories, however, left me a bit befuddled. One dude scrolled through photographic evidence of what seemed like every yellow perch he’d caught in the past ten years. Others showed me their boats, their 2-pound largemouths and stringers full of what appeared to be barely-legal stocker trout.

It seemed like a waste of my time. I wondered if Kevin VanDam has to go through this at every boat show he works or other public appearance that he makes. If Michael Jordan ever worked an NBA Fan Fest, would he be forced to listen to ticket-payers’ stories of the layups they made in junior high school?

I’m certainly not comparing my level of expertise to that of KVD or MJ, but c’mon – as they were telling me these stories, they were directly in line with pictures of me holding 200-pound yellowfin, fighting leaping sailfish, and fly casting for wild rainbow trout on an Alaskan stream with grizzlies in the background. Did they really expect me to be impressed by their catches?

I left a little salty. I might’ve even said snarky things about my new perch-jerking friends. But beyond the fact that my comments were just mean-spirited – along with the possibility that they might someday book a trip with us – I overlooked the fact that they weren’t bragging so much as trying to relate to me and working with the tools in their possession. I’m sure over the years I’ve tortured plenty of people with my fish stories….possibly not KVD, but certainly people more experienced and more expert than me.

Ultimately, it’s the currency that we all have, some of us just have a little more of it. But the less you have, the more valuable the individual experiences might be to you. It’s a good reminder to be humble and appreciate all that I’ve done.