Just when cabin fever has you climbing the walls, Bob Gerding's annual hunting and fishing show comes along to bring the great outdoors inside for a few days.

"It's a great way to bust out of those winter blues," says Gerding who celebrates his 10th anniversary of hosting the show at the state fairgrounds in Albuquerque.

For three days, outdoor enthusiasts can find hunting and fishing guides, lodge operators, outfitters, outdoors-equipment retailers and nonprofit organizations manning booths at the Manuel Lujan Complex on the state fairgrounds in Albuquerque.

There will be events for kids, including a rock-climbing wall, laser and BB gun shooting ranges and a fly-casting pool.

Visitors will find seminars on dog training, fly-fishing the San Juan River in New Mexico or the Arkansas River in Colorado, African safaris and quail hunting.

There will be recreational vehicles of all varieties on display and informational booths from organizations such as the state Department of Game and Fish, Trout Unlimited, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, Federation of Fly Fishers and the New Mexico Wildlife Federation.

To celebrate the show's 10th anniversary, Gerding is giving away an Alaskan fishing trip including lodging, meals and airfare.

Door prizes and giveaways include an elk hunting permit on Ted Turner's Vermejo Park Ranch and a Chama trip including passes on the Cumbres and Toltec Railroad.

The show runs from noon to 7 p.m. on Friday; from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday; and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.

So who is Bob Gerding anyhow and why does he do this?

"I just love it, these are my people," Gerding, 69, of Albuquerque says. "It's like a family reunion. It's fun work."

Gerding's family and friends are all involved in making the show work, as are many of the business associates he has come to know over his years spent working in the outdoor arena.

You might know Gerding from his deep, distinctive voice, tall stature and mane of silver hair. He hosts the weekend television show Wild New Mexico, talks fishing on 94 Rock radio every Thursday and takes calls from viewers of KRQE-TV Channel 13's noon news show every Wednesdays. He's even done some voice-over work for commercials over the years.

Gerding says he ended up on the bawdy, heavy metal radio show because disk jockey T.J. Trout likes to fish.

"He'd come into the store, and one day I asked him why he didn't do a feature like T.J.'s trout picks or something like that on the radio?" Gerding said. "And he said, 'Why don't you?' "

Gerding has made a lot of friends during his 20 years of working the counter at Charlie's Sporting Goods in Albuquerque where he also taught fly-fishing and fly-tying and published some books.

About 10 years ago, he left the Domenici family business to start one of his own, putting clients together with outfitters through his company, Bob Gerding's Outdoor Adventures.

Gerding got the idea for the annual hunting and fishing show while attending shows in Arizona and Colorado where he was marketing a book. He decided it was time to find a show closer to home and the idea was born.

The shows have proven to be very popular, with up to 8,000 people attending last year, he said.

"And that's not counting the kids," he adds.

With all the friends Gerding has made over the years, has he every considered going into politics?

Gerding says he did in college for a brief time, but after dabbling in the process a bit, he decided it wasn't for him.

"I realized I had too many ethics and not enough money," he said.

Gerding is a longtime Albuquerque resident who graduated Highland High School. He holds a business degree from The University of New Mexico where he has been named to the Anderson School of Business' Hall of Fame.

He is an Army vet who served in the reserves during his college years and spent two weeks of active duty each summer at Fort Bliss in Texas.

Gerding followed in his dad's footsteps by going into the insurance business after college, but he didn't like the work and soon found himself managing Albuquerque's first Orvis fly shop before moving on to Charlie's.

Gerding and his wife, Harriet, a retired financial advisor, have two sons, Patrick, of Phoenix and Mike, of Denver, both of whom work in the business field.

A daughter, Laura, died at age 40 of breast cancer, Gerding said.

He has a twin, Dick, a Farmington attorney whose likeness to his brother has come in handy on occasion.

"I've had him fill in for me once," Gerding says of an instance involving a family emergency. "He did some live (television) interviews and nobody knew the difference."

Gerding said he and his brother took an interest in the outdoors as kids, and their dad accommodated them with vacations to places like the Brazos River near Chama.

There the boys learned to fish from an elderly spinster from Albuquerque who took summers off from her job as a bookkeeper to relax and fish on the river.

Gerding said, in those days, they learned to fish with worms, salmon eggs and flies like a gray-hackled peacock or the Rio Grande King. Inevitably, they stuck to fly-fishing out of pure laziness because it was easier than baiting a hook all the time, Gerding said.

As teenagers, the two boys got jobs at the Lazy Ray Dude Ranch in the Jemez Mountains. Located on the Rio Cebolla above Seven Springs Fish Hatchery, the ranch was where Gerding took on his first client and taught a woman to fish.

Gerding said he liked that job because he got to fish twice a day, once in the morning while the clients were getting ready to go out and later in the evening while they enjoyed happy hour.

He turned out to be such a good fisherman that one of his additional duties was to provide trout for the traditional Friday night fish fry, Gerding said.

It was here that he discovered the beauty of the Valles Caldera. The ranch was then known as the Baca Ranch and was a neighbor of the Lazy Ray's.

The ranch hands were free to visit and fish on each other's property in those days, and they all took full advantage of the opportunity, Gerding said.

Nowadays, Gerding still returns to the Valles Caldera to conduct fly-fishing clinics for the public visiting the preserve.

And while fly-fishing might be a very popular outdoor pursuit today, it wasn't always so, Gerding said. It was a little known fishing method back when he was a youth.

"I'd be fishing down on the Rio Grande by the Taos junction bridge and people on the road would stop just to watch," he said. "I'd draw a crowd."

Fly-fishing took off after the Robert Redford's movie, A River Runs Through It, came out in the 1990s, Gerding said. The yuppie era's lifestyle and affluence also helped fuel interest in fly-fishing and other outdoor recreational pursuits.

"I can't tell you the number of outfits I sold and people I taught whom I never ever saw again," Gerding said.

Gerding figures he's taught at least 2,000 people how to fish during the course of his career.

He speculates that the next "undiscovered" outdoor activity in New Mexico would be small-mouth bass fishing, and Navajo Dam would be the hot spot for pursuing that sport.

Gerding says the state needs to do a better job of promoting recreational tourism.

"Outdoor recreation in New Mexico is the most important rural industry we have," he says.

In the meantime, Gerding is doing his part promoting the industry. One of the primary benefits of his show is that potential clients have a chance to meet guides, outfitters and lodge operators in the business.

"And there's no one in these exhibit halls I wouldn't personally recommend," he says.

Contact Karl Moffatt through his blog at www.outdoorsnewmexico.com.

IF YOU GO:  Take Interstate 25 south to Albuquerque, get off at the Louisiana exit and follow it down to Lomas. Turn right and head down to San Pedro and take a left and head down to the fair grounds—now called Expo New Mexico. If you hit Central, you’ve gone to far. The show begins at noon on Friday and runs until 7 p.m. It starts up again Saturday starting at 9 a.m. and continuing until 6 p.m. and again on Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $7 for adults. Kids under 12 get in free. Parking at the fairgrounds is $4.