Do You Need The Latest Greatest Fishing Gear?

As with any other sport, fishing magazines and TV shows are full of ads for the latest and greatest products.  If we follow the ads and what we see the pros using on TV, we might assume that in order to fish well, we will need the newest equipment that we can buy.  We might even get the impression that we need to update our equipment whenever there is a newer product that offers some small advantage.

I recently posted that I added a Humminbird 768 Fish Finder to my boat.  I enjoyed the extra information and detail that the fish finder provides.  We tested it out at Green Mountain Reservoir, locating schools of fish and getting better readings of the depth than we could with our older fish finder.
A reel with lead core line

One thing about the fish finder though, is that it can't catch fish for you!  Sure, it can help you catch fish, but ultimately your success or failure will boil down to how you interpret and use the information that the fish finder provides.

We noticed at Green Mountain Reservoir that despite covering a lot of water and noticing fish around the lake, we were only successful fishing in one certain area.  You can read more about it here.  But to sum it up, we spent a lot of time without catching anything, but one we returned to the area where we had been marking fish, we started catching fish again.
Top of the line fish finder
So did the more expensive fish finder help us?  Or was it just the realization that we needed to be fishing where we had caught them earlier in the day?  In reality, the fish finder helped us to locate where a good number of fish were located, but our decision to return to the fish we had marked came from advice I had received in the past about locating fish and returning to them to try different depths and lures until you figure out what they want to bite on.  So while the technology helped, experience affected the way I decided to use it.

Technology certainly isn't bad.  There are many technological improvements that really do increase your chances of catching fish.  But in the end, it is ultimately up to the fish and whether or not it decides to take your bait or lure.  It isn't wrong to want to update equipment, or to add a piece that you don't have.  But no amount of technology will guarantee you a fish on your line.  You must balance your desire for new equipment with the knowledge that some times it is better to spend your money on gas so that you can actually go fishing.  All the newest, greatest fishing gear will get you nothing if you can't afford to go fishing after you buy it.

What technology do you find is helpful for your fishing?  What equipment do you find to be highly over-rated?  Share it with us in the comment section below.

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