In trying economic times people will turn to a wide variety of ways to find recreation, relaxation and the occasional meal. Fishing is one of the best ways to fulfill all of those needs and really only needs minimum investment. (If you go way back to the bare bones basic, fishing is practically free- all you need is a string, a straight pole, possibly a small, fallen sapling and something to use as a hook.)

While no one is suggesting going to the pond in full survivor mode, you do not have to every bell and whistle to have an enjoyable afternoon of fishing. To save money in every aspect of your fishing trip, you should consider:

1. Rod and reel. This is one of the first places that the fisherman can get into serious financial trouble. If you are a casual, occasional fisherman or a beginner, you certainly do not need the top of the line model of either rod or reel. Consider buying a used rod to save some money; make friends with a constant up-grader, and you will be sitting pretty with his slightly used but still perfectly good rod in no time.

2. Lures and other tackle. Again, this is an area where a little restraint is key. Do not succumb to the late night infomercials that guarantee that the fish will elbow and hip check each other out of the way to get to the “latest and greatest” lure on the market. Excellent fishing can be had with less than ten dollars worth of lures- and those innovators can cost double that for just one!

3. Live bait. Look to this area to not only shave off big bucks from your fishing cost, but to bring you closer to your children as well. Declare a cricket catching contest and watch them go. Set up minnow traps with a day old piece of bread and use your resulting catch to reel in the big ones. Wait for nighttime and catch a bucketful of night crawlers. Not only do you have good, reliable bait, you have paid zero or next to it in the long run.

4. Borrow rather than buy boats, cabins and other big-ticket items. You can even rent fish finders these days so unless you are a tournament fisherman or spend enough time on the water to make it worth it, do not buy any of these items.

If you do prefer to buy them calculate the payback time versus cost per use to see if it is really worth it in the long run. If it costs $20 to rent a small boat for a day, but the boat that you are looking at buying costs $2000, you would have to fish 100 days to make the boat worth it.

Look for the fishing season, and count how many weekends there really is available and realistically how many of those weekends you will be able to fish (estimate ¼ of the time) If the lake that you use most often has a fishing season of say, three months, that is 12 weekends.

One quarter of that available time is three weekends. For each weekend you will be using the boat for two days, which is equal to six days of the actual season that you can use your boat. At this rate it will take a little over 8 seasons for the boat to pay for itself.

During that time you will be spending more money to keep it gassed up, maintained and transported. You will also have to pay for the storage during the off-season and other

miscellaneous associated costs. Does that boat really seem worth it now?