I’ve been reading “Simple Fly Fishing” and it makes a pretty good point for why some gear is so expensive and silly… So, you might say I’m somewhat sensitized about silly gear prices at the moment.
A certain kayak fishing site which I keep meaning to unsubscribe to recently was pimping a pair of fishing pliers and the picture in the article made them look kind of interesting…
As a guy who appreciates good design I have to give them an “A” for effort and was intrigued enough to chase down the product online to find out what the little sucker actually cost (note to folks who review products: mention how nuch stuff actually costs).
Now, I knew that the pliers were going to be expensive (my guesstimate was somewhere around $75) but I was totally unprepared for the actual price tag of $200.
Yes, $200 for a pair of pliers…
As it happens, the pliers I use now for fishing are actually F-i-s-h-i-n-g pliers as opposed to the old cheap sub-$10 multitool that I used to use and I’ll admit to going way over budget buying them because it was on sale but had a nice sheath, floated, and came with a dehooker and I actually needed a dehooker at the time.
I’m pretty sure I spent all of $12 on them…
They work. Sure, I’ll admit that the $200 pliers might have a little better finish than my plastic pliers but they do the same job just as well and what makes them better then the $200-titanium-jewelery is that they actually float. As someone who’s lost more than a few fishing tools to Neptune I can attest that this makes it a better tool for the designed purpose…
Well, unless the purpose was to make a lot of money or so you could impress people with how much you spent on a pair of pliers.