Comments on: The Cheap Fly Fishing Gear You Wish You Still Had

By: broke and bored

broke and bored — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:30:24 +0000

tell me about it I quite literally have the cash flow of a five yo. I live in a state where there are two, thats right two rivers outside the Great Lakes tribs, where trout are stocked. No one wants to pay for a trout stamp and I am forced to fish with the cheapest of the cheap! Kunnan Competitor 7wt! Yeah! Not to forget the medalist reel that I recovered from a flooded basement. 8wt line that I have no idea where it came from but it performs much like a bunch of pipe cleaners might! No car to get to the tribs for steelies or to the two rivers with real fish in them, so I’m forced to fish either Scummit Lake or if I feel ballzy enough I can fish the ghetto Erie TowPath in the hood!! Carp fishing is not fun I dont care what anyone has to say! I try sometimes to close my eyes and imagine I’m wading the Green River, in Wyoming not Utah. All too often that day dream is disrupted by a burst of hot steam from the warmwater outflow from the power plant and the acrid smell of the funkiest mud I could imagine. Cheap yeah I hear you guys! Anyone having a yard sale?

By: Phil Stubbs

Phil Stubbs — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:49:37 +0000

Hey my philosophy is a trout can’t tell the difference between a $500 Hardy reel and a $17 Martin, which is what I purchased on sale last week. Martin is my reel of choice, it holds the line just as well as the Hardy or whatever “designer boutique” reel your local shop is hocking to get your hard earned dollar.
My favorite cheap rod is my fiberglass 7 weight 9’ Lamiglas Rod that I built from a kit I purchased 20 years ago on a close out for $10. It came with the blank, all the guides, handle and reel seat for $10. I built several of these close out rods and gave them to my father and father inlaw. I just wish I had bought more of them. The rod is not only my favorite cheap rod it is my favorite rod.
When I think about it, I usually spend more money on my line, leader and fly than I spend on my rod and reel!
I have 6 rods and 6 reels and have not spent more than $50 for any of them. Watch for the close outs and don’t get sucked into the latest “techno gear” hype. Next year that “techno gear” will be on the close out table for half price to make room for the latest hyped up rod and reel.
Then you will never have the regrets about cheap gear you still wish you had.

By: Tom Chandler

Tom Chandler — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:01:50 +0000

Cliff: You jerk — offering me the East Branch right after I’ve moved, which is when I have the cash flow of a destitute five year-old. Still, send me an e-mail and we’ll talk.

As for the rest of you, I had no idea I’d open so many scabbed-over wounds. From now on, I’m staying away from nostalgia — apparently we’re all the Walking Wounded…

By: Curly Friede

Curly Friede — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:16:52 +0000

Never bought a flyfishing item costing over 175 dollars so all my stuff is relatively “cheap”. Didn’t want to answer this depressing subject but, like that jibbering nightmare entity who forces-compells one to gaze paralized at his hopelessly frightful visage, your question brought forward a line of beloved friends, long gone, who demand to be addressed. Painful business. So many losses.
First was the 8′ bamboo my grandfather gave me when I was four. Caught my first brookie on it. We lived on a lake and that one got a lot of use until I was eight and lent it to Danny Cody, the fat kid next door who was hard on things. Found it in his yard, broken beyond hope. (I found out later that the broken rod was actually revenge. Danny had gotten wind that Chipper Brown, another lake kid, and myself, had plotted to sneak into his house and put snapping turtles in his bed.) It was a 3-piece and the butt section was still good, so I fished with just that until I got the Zebco. Can’t remember what brand it was, but the last fish I caught on the butt section was my first brown.
Next was the immaculate 8′ Montague bamboo my dad’s childhood friend, the great Frank Woolner, gave me. That one caught a lot of New England brookies and smallies. A Millbury cop, after intentionally running over my bike wheel, broke that one over his knee, in front of me, while grinning spitefully. I was in the third grade — doing a regular number on some big smallies spawning in a back cove at Dorothy Pond — and the cop had just caught me ditching school to go fishing for the third time in one month. That was a rough one. My mom locked up my fishing stuff in the chicken coop. But, never losing a step, I fashioned myself a highly effective “skittering pole” from a maple sapling and outfitted it with line and other gear from my dad’s tackle box, and fished with that until things cooled down.
The Frank Woolner Montague came with one of those old Plueger reels with a narrow frame and cool old-timey, teardrop shaped cutouts on the spool. Wish I still had that.
Then there was the workhorse of my youth, the 8′- 6wt Heddon Pal glass rod. For a young flyfisher, the Heddon Pal was all that the name suggests — truely a “pal”: always there, never judging, pragmatic and kind. Caramel-colored, serious business. It did it all. This one survived a move to California and many intrepid adventures before meeting its end on I-5 near Eugene, Oregon back in my early ’70’s
hitchhiking days when it launched from the bed of a guy’s pickup tied to my backpack.
Then I raised four sons who went through tackle like water through a net, and losses there would be a littany too long to even recall. The 8′- 6wt Fenwick Blackhawk, sweetest graphite I ever fished — kids busted it. And I’m not sure what happened to the 9′- 6wt Cortland “S” glass that casted like having a relaxed conversation with the Dalai Lhama. I can think of other stuff too, but can’t go on, it’s too sad, too pathetic. Nothing lasts.

By: kbarton10

kbarton10 — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:14:03 +0000

I wish I had kept that steel bait casting rod my Dad issued me for trout. 25lb test braided squidding line, blue… I remember getting frustrated with a blacklash (openface reel) and flinging it into the creek.

Pop grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and I went in after it…unwilling.

Learned a great lesson about tackle that day.

By: Harry

Harry — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:11:45 +0000

I’m pretty much in the same boat as Hawgdaddy. Combine the fly gear with the 25-30 walleye rods, bass rods, striper rods, and crappie outfits I have accumulated over the last 30 years, cheap is no longer in the equation.

Maybe that has something to do with why the wife banned me from Bass Pro, Cabela’s and the new Orvis shop?

By: overmywaders

overmywaders — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:01:58 +0000

I still have fond memories of a 7′ 4wt Fenwick Ferrulite glass rod I bought new for $35. That rod was a dream to cast, but a friend needed a rod so I passed it along.

But an 1890 vintage 10′ Chubb 6wt cane rod (cheap even in its day) with ring guides, that I bought for $17 is most deeply mourned by me. After replacing all the ring guides with snakes and restoring 100+ intermediates, I used that rod for years. It was so slow I could start the back-cast, go home for lunch, return to the stream and enjoy a leisurely smoke — and only then would it be time for the forward cast. But oh how it cast! A simple flick of the wrist, no arm movement, would extend the line effortlessly from 10′ to 30′ and drop it gently. Such is life, I needed money and had to part with the rod.

Reed

By: hawgdaddy

hawgdaddy — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:02:34 +0000

“Cheap Fly Gear You Should Have Kept, But Didn’t”?

I’ve still got all my cheap gear. It’s all I have. Of course, cheap is a relative term. I’ve now got so much cheap gear that the shear quantity may disqualify “cheap” as one of it’s characteristics.

hawgdaddy

By: Cliffordo

Cliffordo — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 12:45:11 +0000

Well, if you still hunger for it, I have one and am willing to sell it. Ipaid $225 for it and it is fine used but not abused condition.
I have a Scott 3 pc equally fine, love it even more and don’t need two greast 5 wts!!