5/16/2008

Nickeled-and-Dimed to Death

Save Hundreds of Dollars a year on Fishing Gear

Timothy Kusherets

There is no way around it. Getting the meat and potatoes of fishing gear must be done where the specialists can help you the most and that means Sporting Goods Stores. Some of the best tackle you can get can be bought there, and the knowledgeable staff members are eager to impart wisdom onto you; but, did you ever wonder if there was someplace else to get great fishing gear without paying the huge prices that seem to come with overall purchases from one-stop-shopping? Guess what? There are some things you can do to ensure you don’t get nickeled-and-dimed to death. In this article you’ll find four outstanding ways to save hundreds of dollars a year on fishing gear. The funny thing about it is, some of the purchases seem rather innocuous and too small to be of consequence, but as we all well know…it adds up. Some of the best places to get fishing stuff don’t even advertise the great gear they have because they don’t even know it, but the gear is there. Still, other ideas of saving money don’t actually involve going to strange places at all, rather, it’s not “where” you shop it’s “when” you shop. Start with Off-season Shopping, Going to the Fabric Store, Getting Gear in the Hardware Store, and finishing with Buying fishing gear in bulk.
Off-Season shopping is literally done months in advance of any fishing season. Why would someone want to do that? Any woman worth her shopping smarts could tell you in an instant. Shopping off peak shopping times means lower prices and sometimes the savings are as high as eighty percent. That’s right, when the fishing gets slow the prices of gear plummet and you have to watch for it. The gear that fluctuates the most are Lures, Scents, and Fishing Line. It’s true. The next time a fishing season comes around and you run out of your favorite fishing lure or bait. Head to the store and pay attention to the prices of each. Most of the time, during the height of each season, prices soar and you pay for it willingly because the fish are biting. You can bet that I do the same thing, which is why I try to get all my gear by as much as six months in advance. Imagine that a spinner costs four dollars during the fishing season. With off season purchases the price can fall down to three-twenty-five. The savings off one lure is seventy-five cents, now focus that it’s just “one” lure. If you’re an avid fisherman you can run through as many as fifty lures in one season for a myriad of reasons; rust, broken hooks, snags, bent hooks, and fish breaking you off. Now, if you end up buying fifty lures during off season you save as much as thirty-seven dollars or more. That’s only one thing and doesn’t even address Scents and Fishing Line. Add them all up and off season shopping has already saved you around three hundred dollars since most angler run through one heck of a lot of all three with fishing line costing the most by the end of the season no matter what kind it is. Getting good deals can be found just about anywhere and one of them is right in front our faces but generally overlooked.
Can you believe it? Fabric stores offer a great alternative to buying fishing tackle. As a matter of fact, most of the things they have to offer intrepid shopping anglers they don’t even know about. Just about all Fabric Stores have scissors, thread for tying, tackle boxes and yarn. The fundamental differences in the sizes, shapes, and functions of them all are left only to the location; everything else is the same. Tackle boxes can be found in the storage section of each store and the price differences can be by as much as twenty-dollars per box; but that’s not all. Thread and yarn used to tie flies and jigs can be bought for many times less than you would find in the typical sporting goods store, and they are the same exact things in both stores. Getting scissors in a fabric store offers you a wider variety of cutting utensils at a substantial savings. Each of these items is almost twice as cheap as sporting retails stores which make it worth the effort to go in and get the tackle they didn’t even know they had. Another great place to get fishing gear is the local hardware store.
Hardware stores offer items that are essential to anglers that aren’t typically “seen” but are used often. WD-40 can be used for a wide variety of functions beyond that of lubrication and costs about a third less in the hardware store. When you find the right store you can get two for the price of one from “that” store which can amount to three times cheaper than that of where you get your fishing gear. Most hardware stores offer discounts on needle-nose pliers. Some sporting goods stores price pliers around eighteen dollars when you could get it for three to four dollars, sometimes cheaper than that. Do you know what the difference between grease is from one store to the next? It’s all about location and that’s it. Gear oil and grease in the hardware store can be incredibly cheap by comparison, so much so that it behooves fishermen to pick up as much of it as they can. It’s conceivable that you may never have to buy either again at the prices they offer. To get even better deals, watch your junk-mail flyers and keep an eye out for sales. I fish fresh and saltwater and tend to go through a lot of WD-40 during the season and then again when the seasons over as I put away the gear.
One of the best ways to shop is also one of the most bizarre. Buy in bulk. That’s right, sometimes the more you buy the more you save. It can be done, and I do it all the time. Most of the things that should be bought in bulk are hooks, corkies (lil' corky's), swivels, and fluttering lures. It’s hard to get really good deals on spinners and crank-baits since they can cost extra money right from the beginning, unless stores offer a sale on each particular item. If, when you go to the sports store, ask someone behind the counter if there are discounts for large purchases of one product…and I mean large. There are one of two possible outcomes. Either the clerk will say yes or they’ll tell you how to contact the manufacturer and order from them directly. In both cases be ready to get a whole lot of stuff. The discounts you should get range from ten to twenty percent. A bundle of hooks of one-hundred or more can cost about twenty-two dollars, after taxes. If you buy from the manufacturer you’ll probably have to buy no less than fifteen packages of hooks, and the cost of the purchase can leave a hole in your pocket, or can it? If you go in with a couple of guys to get the hooks you can lessen the burden of the final cost and make it worth the effort. Let’s do a little math. Assume that a package of hooks of a hundred costs 22.50 after taxes. If you were to buy 15 packages of hooks it would cost 337.50. Now suppose you get the discount from the manufacturer at 20 percent then the cost would be 270.00. That’s a savings of four dollars and fifty cents per package and sixty-seven dollars and fifty-cents! In that one purchase not only do you save a great deal of money, you’ve got hooks to last you a few season. Can you imagine not needing to buy hooks for a few seasons? The best part is the more you buy the more you save.
Don’t misunderstand any of this. Some of the best fishing gear can only be purchased at the sporting goods store. I love the places I shop and tell everyone about them. Sometimes, stopping in at the store feels more like a hangout than anything else because a lot of good fishermen congregate there; but, saving money is an important part of fishing.
Angling can be expensive if you don’t know how to shop for the gear. If you do it right it doesn’t have to. We get nickel and dimed to death enough without having our beloved sport do it to us too. These ideas are some great ways to save money, and with all the money you save you’ll really impress the wife, maybe enough so that she’ll let you get that really expensive fishing rod you’ve been looking at. It could happen.