Tom Helgeson's death last year won't stop his Fly Fishing Expo this year -- and his family plans to revive his magazine, Midwest Fly Fishing, too.

"We want to honor what my dad started and not have it die with him," said his daughter, Carrie Helgeson. "We couldn't just walk away from it."

The revamped show, renamed Tom Helgeson's Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo, runs Friday to Sunday at a new location, the National Sports Center in Blaine. Any profits will go to a new Tom Helgeson Legacy Fund, which will support river restoration and other conservation work.

Helgeson, 71, of Minneapolis, a longtime conservationist, fly- fishing advocate and journalist, died last fall after a brief battle with lung cancer. He created and ran the expo and the magazine as one-man operations.

"The expo [launched in 2004 in Bloomington] morphed into a powerful celebration of the sport and conservation," Carrie Helgeson said. "It became something bigger than my dad. People wanted it to continue."

So Helgeson's family -- wife Julie, Carrie, a social worker in Los Angeles, and son Baird, a Star Tribune reporter -- and friends elected to carry on his legacy.

"The amount of support from the fly-fishing community, the conservation community and our readers have surpassed anything we could have expected," Carrie Helgeson said. "What was most important for him was to provide space and opportunity for people to celebrate the sport and conservation. For my dad, it was never, ever about making money."

She said the National Sports Center has embraced her dad's mission, and she's hopeful the expo will flourish there. A Chicago show has been dropped.

Helgeson's magazine, Midwest Fly Fishing, hasn't published since last spring.

"It's not dead," his daughter said. She said the family hopes to resume publication this year.

"Our readers have been incredibly supportive."