Good buying Matt..! Where'd you get it from...hope not from Mo Ta.k.. as they said the prices would go up site wide after Jan 01 (not down!!) and I bought a Silstar off 'em in Dec.
Anyway, sometimes el'cheapo might be the ONLY option you have so you gotta make the most of what you can get. I'm over here in the Middle East just now, 120kms inland from Dubai.
I usually fish off a breakwall that's about 100km south west of Dubai and I have to travel 140km to get there. It's about the closest place to fish from my current location (too bad - how sad)
Anyway, over this way there aint many tackle shops (near to none actually). I have a no-frills fishing trip planned soon and I needed to stock up on a few hooks. I found a small fishing section downstairs in an 'el-tacky' department store.
They only had a limited range inside a glass cabinet so I had to buy a selection of what they had. For about 8 bucks I bought thirty six hooks (all less than 1/0 in size), a dozen swivels and five fluero foam bobby corks.
With no choice available, re: brand or quality I had to get what was there. Fortunately they did have an option of galvanised straight shank of a more silvery metallic style of off-set hooks with baitholder barbs - so I went the off-set.
So the 'el-cheapo' hooks and floats will have to do the job.
For the fishing, my wife will use an 'el-cheapo' Abu Garcia' 3bb reel matched to an Abu Garcia 8" muscle tip with an unknown brand of 15lb mono. She'll enjoy her fishing as she likes the action & feel of her chosen gear!
I'll use a Curado DSV300 with my GL Loomis & YGK Jigman braid so I will also enjoy the fishing. I'll be casting a few lures & un-weighted ganged pillies. I'll be interesed to see if the hooks we bought will adequate - most likely yes.
In case youre wondering, I do have hooks bigger than 1/0 that I brought over from Oz. But I didn't bring any smaller than that (the wife likes fishing the for pickers). Pillies are readily available over here but generally the people buy them to cook, not for bait...crikey!
Anyway, me & the missus will go fishing more for the outing itself - not necessarily to fill the freezer. We'll both enjoy having a line in the water, that's the main thing!
Geeze, I lost the gist of this thread...sorry if it got pear shaped. I started off making some kind of point about el-cheapo sometimes being your "only" option & you just gotta go with it.