searching for DT #4 & #5 floating lines

[Paul Arden]

* edit. 444SL. 1986? Price £35. Today in real terms that’s £105! https://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflat ... ?amount=35

Maybe we’re just getting old and grumpy

Cheers! Paul

[Lasse Karlsson]

You know something is rotten when you realise that inflation says you should have doubled your salary since the mid 90's according to that site, and you haven't by a very long shot...

Cheers
Lasse

[Paul Arden]

Well back in 1986 I was earning £2.50/hr

[Torsten]

100 days with the chinese DT sounds pretty good for me. Most lines failed earlier for me, maybe because I'm fishing from the bank with lots of mud, grit involved and if fishing is too boring I'm doing some casting for fun.

I've looked into some older catalogues - for the top lines from Rio: 2009/10 Rio Gold 65€, 2017 Rio Gold InTouch 100€, 2020 Elite Rio Gold 120€.
Inflation in Germany was in the last years between 1-2%/year, so this increase - at least for their best lines - is well above inflation. At this rate, the (top) Rio trout lines will cost ~€200 in 10 years.

Torsten.

[Paul Arden]

At the other end of the spectrum I’ve killed a MED in 4 days muddy competition, severely cracked in the hauling section and 3-4 weeks was pretty normal for me when I was training 4hrs/day on grass.

I always remember being very surprised when I first fished NZ. Up to this point I was fishing the UK reservoirs and floating lines would last me 5-6 weeks. (A HiD would last 3-4!!). On my first trip to NZ I got a full six months out of a line before it cracked. The only real difference I could think of was the summer algae blooms in the UK water I was fishing.

Before RÍO appeared in the UK the margins on flylines was quite low. About 1.4 or 1.5. The margins suggested for RÍO (not by RÍO but by the distributor was 1.8). I actually think that’s quite reasonable. Owning a tackle shop is a nice business, but just like a pub you’re not going to be a fat cat unless you have a chain of them! Anyway the point is in the pricing there are a lot of things that make a difference.

Currently Euro-USD is 1.19
In 2009 it was 1.39

Cheers, Paul

[Lasse Karlsson]

I am really glad I fish shootingheads
They last decades.... shootinglines, years...

Cheers
Lasse

[Paul Arden]

Yep There are some advantages to fishing heads!

If you don’t fish very often then your line is going to last a long time, especially if you don’t practise! If you clean and lubricate your lines during and after every trip then you will extend their life considerably. And of course if you are a professional or semi-professional line-killer then there is usually a discount programme.

Cheers, Paul

[Torsten]

Yes, this is true, I still have 20+years old shooting heads, now and then you need to replace a loop, otherwise not much issues with cracking & co.
Shooting lines don't last that long for me, but are usually cheap & easy to replace (if they're mono lines). But shooting heads are not always ideal, especially shorter distances, accuracy, dry flies etc. there I prefer a full line.

A friend of me used to cut his DTs into two halves and spliced on braided mono as running line, refrigerated the other half. This way you can save also money, e.g. for river fishing you seldom have the running lines outside the guides. One guy in Germany sells even such self-made "WFs".

[t.z.]

The price increase has not very much to do with inflation. Ironically it's mostly caused by centralisation. As in the music instrument business the fly fishing manufacturing business has shrunk just a few big names. These big corporations sell through a supply chain in which every step adds around 100% to the end user price. They also spend a good amount on marketing and their branding works very well. Owning / using a certain brands gear (rods, lines and even more so wading gear) can be almost a religious obsession in some sever cases of "SIMMS". Another item which is way overpriced compared to it's true manufacturing value.

I prefer to buy stiff where I know the person making the product. That way I can sort of make sure not to feed a supply chain but rather get a more decent product from a "raw materials" point of view. This also seems more eco friendly as I end up buying "locally", specifically food. However, me and my wife have bought some fly rods from a dude own boat in Malaysia. Please do not hold that against us ... the other rod manufacturer I knew locally only made bamboo sticks, where the raw material come from China ... well :-D



Anyway, I just was until Mike Barrio has stock again then. I just had client who fished here and he loved the DT. He could not believe how easy it was on mending, line control etc. so he asked me where he could find a DT line to go with the rod he bought from me.

[Paul Arden]

I think it’s still a cottage industry. It’s true there has been some consolidation in recent years. It would be interesting to hear from an American to see if they think there has been significant price increase. From Torsten’s example the US-Euro exchange rate has changed by more than 15%.

It’s funny I went skiing a couple of times in Austrla. Quite a bizarre experience involving high speed crashes and a lot of time on my arse. First time I went there I thought “wow, cheap bread, cheap beer, quality supermarket food and everything is so well priced!! I would love to live here, if it wasn’t so damned cold and dangerous.”

I returned one year later – fuck me it was expensive. The exchange rate had changed. We were at a party on the last night in a bar and everyone was having a good time, and so we’re we, but we ran clean out of cash and had to go back to our hotel early. On the way back I took the small change out of my pocket and thew it into the Austrian snow. Here keep your damned money!

True story

Cheers, Paul