Luggage - Inexpensive, Not Cheap
There are plenty of dumb ways to spend your money, but in my opinion one of the dumbest is super-expensive luggage. I mean, if you want to spend $9,100 on a Louis Vuitton Bisten suitcase that’s your business, but I can pretty much guarantee you that the baggage handlers will treat it every bit as harshly as they treat a bargain basement roller from the discount store. In fact, they might resent you enough that they’ll treat it worse. If you’re flying on your own Gulfstream, that might not be quite as much of an issue, but nevertheless I’m sure you can find plenty of better uses for that cash.
Assuming that you don’t have that much to spend, but you still want to have quality gear for fishing travel, there are some really high-quality items that are pricey (but not that pricey). For example, lots of fishing travelers swear by the following duffels:
The North Face Base Camp, which costs $185 for the XXL size;
The Patagonia Black Hole, which costs $179 for the largest version, or $349 for the largest wheeled version; or
The fishing-specific Fishpond submersible duffel, which costs $399.95.
I’d love to have any of those. I’ve examined all of them up close and they are really well-constructed. Additionally, a light duffel bag is a key element of my fishing travel. I don’t use one when I fly commercially to Mexico, but on trips that have had severe weight limits necessitated by small planes, like Africa or Brazil (typically limited to 40 pounds total per person), they’re critical.
My solution for the past decade has been an Outdoor Products bag from Wal-Mart, which retails for about 20 bucks. It even came with a small stuff sack to hold it that I now use to carry my toiletries. It’s super lightweight (about a pound) so you can pack more underwear or topwaters, it’s made it through all sorts of trying conditions, and it’s pretty damn rugged. I’ve had no trouble with the zipper or rips, and if I did, I wouldn’t be heartbroken. I’d just buy another, figuring that I’d gotten my money’s worth. The only thing I don’t like about it is the shoulder strap, which has weak padding and digs into your shoulder when the bag is loaded, but that can be easily and inexpensively fixed.
I’d love to have one of those more expensive bags, and I’m sure that in some situations having a waterproof or slightly more durable model would be well worth it, but for most of us, and for most of our travels, this is a place you can save some bucks. If you don’t like the Wal-Mart model, I’m sure you can get something comparable at Bass Pro Shops or Target or an Army surplus store, if those still exist.
