What's 'cheap'?

If you look at online fishing forums, high-end gear is $500-$1000, mid-range is $150-$500 and 'budget' is $100-$150.

You'll also come across the stories of an old dude catching fish on $40 combos from Walmart or Kmart, who's more than happy with his gear and doesn't see the need for expensive gear. And then someone will post how that's great, but they'll stick with their Saltiga, because they actually know what they're missing out on and can't go back to cheap rubbish.

I grew up trying to get the most out of Jarvis Walker. When I started fishing, Jarvis Walker was the Daewoo of the fishing world; it functioned OK, but was certainly nothing exciting. In this day and age, Jarvis Walker is treated with the same disdain as Chery and Great Wall. It's below the spectrum of even 'budget', like much other fishing gear priced below $100.

The truth is that most fishing gear is produced in China, from Van Staal to Shimano to Jarvis Walker and to the junk someone can't be bothered putting a brand on. China makes some great stuff, and they make some terrible stuff. Making things in China is cheap. The costs of materials and labour are really low, due to economies of scale, huge government subsidies and, to an extent, people's willingness (tolerance?) to endure particular working conditions and pay.

This leads to some ethical questions, such as 'does buying a Van Staal support better pay and conditions for Chinese workers?', or 'does buying an unbranded copy of a Saltist take jobs away from Japan (or wherever they're making them this year)?'. In reality, what you buy will no sooner change developing world exploitation any more than riding a bicycle to work will halt global warming. You're just trying to catch some fish, for goodness sake!

I'm a marine science graduate (first class honours, if you must ask...) and have a fair bit of expertise in fisheries and natural resource management thanks to my day job. I really enjoy catching fish, and fished 'responsibly' long before anyone ever printed that on the excessive plastic and cardboard packaging that comes with fishing tackle and equipment. OK, you've caught me, I don't enjoy cleaning fish all that much, so I've only ever kept what I could be bothered filleting and/or what I might give away to my friends (usually whole fish; if I've ever given you fillets, that's a pretty good indicator that I value your friendship quite deeply). I also know that many species of fish don't deal well with getting hooked up, tired out and released; swimming away is far from the final story. I prefer to quickly and humanely put them out of their misery and stop fishing once I've caught enough for a feed or two (or justify the fuel used to catch them).

Why am I talking about eating fish? What's that got to do with defining what cheap is? Well, fish is usually a relatively inexpensive source of protein. The highest quality local fish (King George whiting, coral trout, rock lobster) is usually priced similarly to high end terrestrial meat ($40-60/kg). Commercial fishing, by its very nature, should be an efficient process of delivering fish from the water to the customer.

Just as the saying goes, a penny saved is a penny earned, so a meal of fish is essentially money saved from buying something else. An economist will tell you that, to properly value the meat you've just caught and put on the table, you should take into consideration all the costs associated with obtaining it. Time (minimum wage is $17.something/hour), fuel (boat or car) and bait/tackle/equipment are all costs that we frequently disregard in the pursuit of our hobby.

In this blog, I want to emphasise, mostly for the fun of it, frugality. You can minimise time costs by picking the right place to fish at the right time using the right technique. You can minimise fuel costs by being smarter about where and/or what you fish for. But there's less help out there for how cheap you can get with tackle/equipment without compromising frugality.