NEW YORK CITY: Capitol Fishing Tackle is moving. This place is an iconic store among the urban angling set, a place I like to go on my lunch break because it's a ten minute subway ride from my office. The good news is the new location will be even closer, and a convenient pit stop when I run to catch my train home from Penn Station. For me, there are three stops in the NYC fishing store rotation, which I hit for various reasons...Capitol Tackle, Orvis New York, and the Urban Angler. Some people call the last one "the Urban Strangler" because of its high prices, but its got a great selection of non-Orvis fly gear and the guys on staff are incredibly helpful, and tie some great flies. For all non-fly tackle, Capitol is it.
On Long Island, I have a few shops I hit as well. Orvis Greenvale is 15 minutes from my house. For all my non-fly fishing needs, my favorite place to hit is Sea Isle Tackle in Freeport, about a 15 minute drive from my house in the opposite direction. And when I go fish the Connetquot River I hit the Parkwood Outfitters shop.
When I go to these stores, I feel a compulsion to buy something. I can't just walk in and look around, I've got to buy new flies to test or new lures to try. My wife counted 19 rods in my fishing closet, yet I'm always looking to find the next one I need to complete the collection. (It's always just one more and then I'm done.)
The last time I went into Sea Isle, for instance, I walked out with Shimano Butterfly jigs that I wanted to try. When you get all the gear needed to make them work, they cost about $18 apiece. I'm sure I'll think about that when I snag bottom with one, instead of the $2 bucktails I typically use to jig. Then there are the $20 bunker flies from Urban Angler, which look and act like adult menhaden and are about as difficult to cast. Then there's all the superhair and epoxy and junk I buy to tie mutated flies that always seem to increase my "bluefish" stash...So I wind up buying flies online from ArtsNFlies and The Fly Shop.
When you think about all the people who are ten times worse than me with all this, is it no wonder that fishing is a multi-billion dollar a year industry?