Hate to say it but your right
Most guys expect to go in a local gun shop handle the thermal day/ night vision ect
Then go home and get it cheaper on line from a few people well known for under cutting trade prices I get it but that’s why shops close down there’s a lot of over heads involved with running shops
I really don’t understand how or why people do the above. But I know that plenty do.
I went into Game Fish in Edinburgh about three weeks and treated myself to good Salmon rod and spent a few hundred quid. I am sure I could have got it cheaper online after having spent time looking at it. New real, line and skaget head (what ever that is).
I fished with it for two days. I hated it day one. I couldn’t get on with it at all. But then my existing rod is 30 plus years old. I looked a few videos overnight on how to use modern rods. I had been doing everything wrong.
Day two I started dialing into it. And beginning to get the hang of it. My god its easy to cast a long way when you get it correct. I went from 1 cast in 10 to 4 out of casts during the course of the day.
Day 3 was in the water before 8. Casting with godlike beauty. 09.30 my 22 year old daughter turns up. She watches me for a few moments, I hand her the rod, and five casts she is into a huge fish - her first.
Together we play it for 25 minutes. Just getting to stage where its getting towards being ready for the net and we start moving it towards some shallower water where we can actually land it.
And the clean breaks in two just above the handle. Miss Heym is left with a fish on the reel. She does get a few turns on the handle and then it breaks the line.
Following day I pop into Game Fish with the Rod. The take one look at my face - you broken it? Yep. They take a look at the rod. A clean break - manufacturing fault- no issue at all. It will be replaced. We don’t have another one here, so borrow one of our rods for the time and we will have a replacement forth with.
That’s why I much rather buy things from people whom I can have a conversation with rather than some faceless bott in a shed.
