Buy the Nice Gear for Your Passion Pursuits

High-end gear is not required to do much of anything, but the level of your personal enhancement should dictate your purchasing decisions

“You don’t need expensive gear to catch fish.”

You don’t need expensive gear to do anything really. But that’s not really a point to argue over, in my opinion. The point around hobbies or activities that you are passionate about is maximizing the enjoyment of the experience. For some people it’s the company. For some people it’s the scenery and surroundings. For some people it’s the uniqueness of the activity. And for others it’s enjoying all of it to its fullest potential. And sometimes a nice piece of gear contributes to that.

I would never chastise people for swinging one way or the other on the topic of more expensive gear, as I would rather focus on helping folks enjoy their outdoor experiences more.

Excess is what I generally internally and externally fight against. Folks will buy 10 mediocre things instead of one good tool. Or people will buy for that “just in case” scenario that often never materializes. Or worse yet, guys will load up on something because they see other dudes have loaded up on something.

THE CONSUMPTION CONUNDRUM

I write this piece partially because I have been a spend thrift at points in my life. I would buy every tool I thought I might one day need. Or buy whatever I didn’t have that was needed to do a single project. And compound that with my high-level ADHD and OCD, it can spin out of control easily. When I decide to do something, I go ALL IN. Purchasing everything I think I might have ever possibly needed to do the job.

Then something happened, and my perspective was fundamentally altered.

My father passed away.

That gave me pause. Caused me to reflect on my own decisions and mortality. Not just because of losing a loved one, but also because some of the regrets he expressed towards the end, as unwarranted as they may have been, caused me to reflect a lot on avoiding some of these things in my own life as I get closer to his age of passing.

“I have all that stuff in the garage and downstairs (in his workroom),” he told me a month or two before he passed. “Your mom won’t know what to do with it. I shouldn’t have bought so much junk.”

I assured my father he had nothing to worry about. I would take care of that along with friends of the family, and mom would never have to worry with any of it. And I assured him that he left mom plenty of money, and if he spent money on a few things along the way to enjoy his life a little more, so be it.

But it did completely change my perspective on buying things.

I think the modern world has had a very superficial affect on humans. It has removed all barriers to consumption of products, caused a sense of entitlement to immediate gratification, and made folks incapable at times of discerning if they “actually need” the thing they are purchasing.

The mass marketing that used to only hit us for the few hours we were in front of the TV in the evenings now hits us every waking moment of every single day on our mobile devices, TVs, computers, and literally every place we go from the gas station to the grocery store. And since most folks can’t put their mobile phone down for more than 10 minutes at any given time, it’s literally non stop bombardment.

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m complicit to a point too. I have advocated for certain products for the better part of two decades around fishing. So I’m just as guilty as the other mass marketing out there today. And trust me, it’s an internal conflict for me all the time. But my conflict is a good thing. It means I will be more earnest about not recommending everything under the sun. In fact it has been a guiding principle for much of my work.

Rather than tell you every product is great and “you got to have it.” I try to figure out the problem a product best serves to solve and then advocate for it only if I’ve had good experiences with it and if I think this solves something a lot of others will encounter in their fishing.

If you need a faster reel, here are some good options. Need a rod with a little more backbone; here are some good options. Having issues with your line for this certain technique? Here are some options that will probably work better.

And I hope folks understand. I am not advocating for them to buy every product. I’m sharing experiences with the products, hopefully in way that if that tool solves a problem for you, then you will know that’s a good option for it on a case by case basis. I review as much as I can, share what I think is good, and if someone is in the market for a certain product, maybe those reviews help them make a good decision.

BUYING GOOD GEAR IS OKAY

I have caught a lot of fish on $20 rods and $20 reels. I’ve made a point to find affordable options that are good for much of my life. But I’ve also noticed over the last decade, I have also bought a lot of cheap stuff off of Amazon because I thought it would solve a problem and ended up requiring me to get something else. Do this too much, and you end up with a house full of stuff you wished later that you hadn’t bought.

So now, I’m very deliberate with purchases. I buy what I need for certain projects at times if I evaluate that the tool in question will be useful longterm and potentially can save me a lot of hassle later. But I also sometimes see if I can borrow what I need if I think I will only do this one time.

I also am more willing to buy one good piece of gear on occasion rather than a lot of sub par gear all the time. I’m at the age where downsizing and minimizing stuff has become as much necessity as function. But that’s only part of the reason I will buy a good piece of gear.

The other reason I will by a good piece of gear is to enjoy my experiences on the water more. That doesn’t mean you have to have the $1,000 fly rod. There are a slough of incredible $400 fly rods. But if you think that $1,000 fly rod will get a ton of use and provide you a lot of additional enjoyment for many years as well as say a son or grandson, I say go for it.

I’m not advocating that you have a dozen $1,000 fly rods. That’s excess in my opinion. Even for a fly fishing guide. But one great rod that you just love to pick up and fish, can be of extreme value to a person.

And trust me, I know I sound like a hypocrite staring at more than 100 fishing rods in in the corner of my fishing room at the house. But many of those were sent to me and very few were purchased. The rods I purchase take a ton of time and research and consideration now before I will pull the trigger. And, I’m not ashamed in the least to buy a used rod.

I, however, also have an $800 BFS rod from Megabass. I have a $570 2-wt fly rod from G. Loomis that I use almost exclusively for panfish. People say I’m crazy for using that expensive gear. Truth be told, I didn’t buy either of those rods. They were given to me by partners I work with in the fishing space. But they have been two of my all time favorite rods I own, and I have gotten so much joy exploring new waters with both.

I own three $600 Shimano Conquest reels for BFS fishing, and I bought all three of those. I own an Echo/Hardy and an Echo/Sage fly combo that cost more than $1,000 each, and I bought both. And I would likely spend $1,000 to own a custom refurbished, BFS-geared Abu Garcia 1500C reel. Because those specific items are/were at the top of my list of wants. But they mean a lot to me in making my style of fishing so much more enjoyable on the water to me.

That’s the crux of it for me. We all work very hard (or at least I want to believe most people do) to provide for families, be of value in our careers, and generally be good folks to other human beings. But our time on this rock is limited. Some more than others. If getting out and enjoying time on the water is a little sweeter with a great stick or hearing a buttery smooth drag sing, I encourage folks to do it.

Forego the four “ho-hum tools” in lieu of the one “ah-ha tool!”

I’m not saying put your family in a bad spot to have something nice. I’m saying sock the money away and save for it, and then feel very good about doing that for yourself. In the end, we’re going to die, and we can’t take the money with us. Don’t spend as much money on frivolous things, so that you can save and spend money on something really nice that helps you enjoy the thing you already love that much more. I’m advocating for enhancing the things you do love. And not wasting a ton of money on the things you don’t.

I EQUATE BIG PURCHASES TO WORK EFFORT

I fully acknowledge that not every “W2 employee” can operate like this. But I think this mindset is easier when you equate big purchases with the work it takes to get them. I own my own business now, and I make between $75-$150 hour depending on the scope of projects and work loads. So if I want to buy a $400 rod, I need to go do between 3-6 hours of work. And I approach it now, like I need to do 3-6 hours of additional work to feel good about that higher purchase. So in essence I need to find another 4-8 hours of work somewhere where I can justify this new purchase.

We’re in a different stage of life than many folks. We don’t have a house payment, car payment or boat payment. We live below our means in most other parts of our life. And that affords us the ability to make a purchase here and there that really matters to us even if it costs a little more.

We are in our early 50s, and we both find Father Time is coming quicker for us now. So we are trying to soak up as many experiences as we can now while we are in good health and financially free in many regards. A lot of that is travel. And a lot of it enhancing parts of that travel with something new.

I will share something for context here. When we first got married, we went to one of the Bass Pro Shops Fishing Weekends back in the late 90s in Springfield (when there was just one Bass Pro Shops). There was a Lew’s reel on sale I wanted to get, and I could get it for $84. I walked around for an hour in the store, debating on whether I should spend so much on a fishing reel. I had a lot of $20-$40 reels and wanted to splurge once on a better reel.

I finally convinced myself to do it. I paid for it up front of the Bass Pro, and when it rang up, it was on a bigger sale. It rang up for $48. So my wife ran back, grabbed another one and we bought two.

We were young, married and like most in those early years of marriage, somewhat broke. But she knew fishing was more than a passion for me, and that I was agonizing over spending the money on something I cared about, but that didn’t help our family. She probably doesn’t know how much that meant to me, but it’s engraved in my memory bank three decades later. Because that purchase was meaningful. It was more than just a reel although neither of us could appreciate it as much at the time.

I knew I was going to promote up. I knew I was going to move to a better higher paying job. I knew I would keep making it worth it to her too. I can’t tell you how I knew that. I just knew because I was wired that way. To push for better. And I had a strong desire to find a way into making fishing my living.

So, as long as the purchase is meaningful and deliberate, don’t let the the Dave Ramseys of the world talk you out of it. You can make more money. You can take on extra work. You can find side hustles. You can save and cut out other less important expenses.

I share all this as I sometimes recommend expensive gear. But I have also recommended a bunch of inexpensive gear. I know not everyone has the same budgets or can make those same choices at the point they are at in their own lives. Lord knows I spent hardly any money on fishing in the early years of marriage and even less in the early years after my son was born.

Now I have a lot more time to fish and I spend a lot of time fishing alone. And, in those moments, I find holding a finely crafted tool in your hand, while doing something you love, exploring new places, deeply satisfying.

There is a book written by Japanese author Tanizaki called In Praise of Shadows. It talks about a master honing his craft with a finely constructed tool so much that it eventually conforms to his hand to the point where the two become almost married to each other in the endeavors of honing their craft. I find that part of fishing similarly poetic. Especially with something I’ve grown fond of recently like fly fishing.

I seek perfection in the things I do, as a simple exercise of improving daily if possible at all things collectively. And, in the things I do as passion pursuits, I enjoy them much more with finely crafted tools in my hand.

I hope you consider spending the time to reflect on what pursuits are meaningful in your life and you put a little more towards enhancing that for yourself. And a little less towards the frivolous stuff “they” want to compel you to need.