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Does anyone know how long this was running for? Did I miss my chance?

You could buy them and sell them on for profit.

Walmart has followed the Amazon model and has products on their website that are sold and shipped by another company. So make sure you look at what company is actually selling the item. You can filter to only items for sale by Walmart

When I saw this the fist thing that went through my head was "BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL"

if you know where it sank you could have someone with scuba equipment dive for it. See if there are any scuba clubs in the area. I have a friend that is into scuba diving and he had a couple of guys that contacted him to retrieve some shotguns that sank when the canoe they were using to duck hunt capsized. He ended up retrieving 3 shotguns and some other gear they had lost. He wasn't going to charge them but they ended up paying him around $150 for his time and expenses. The word must have got out that he could help and he gets a couple of calls a year to help find lost shotguns and fishing poles. Even if it costs $50-$100 to get someone to retrieve them it would be worth the cost instead of replacing a ~$450 setup

Another option to save a little money would be to buy the cheapest reel you can then trade that in at BPS. I saw a cheap spin cast combo at a local Walmart. You would still be saving $20 total and you would be helping some young kid to start fishing

Catt, I have learned so much from reading your posts. Especially your advice about fishing jigs or t-rigged plastics at night to improve your ability to detect strikes. I think I have finally found some information that hopefully you will find useful. instead of just adding bassresource after your search on Google put "site:www.bassresource.com" without the quotation marks. This works for any website and I have found that the results are much better than using the search feature on any forum. This is how I search any forum. By adding the "site:" then the website it will only search within the website specified

I agree with carrying higher end lures. Initially, you probably will not make much money on the tackle. I think you could use the lures and tackle to help draw customers in. I think targeting the higher end lures, especially popular lures that are not readily available locally will bring potential boat customers in the door. I don't think there will be much benefit in carrying a bunch of cheaper lures. Cheap lures require the same amount of floor space but generate much lower profit per item. Plus we all know how hard it is to resist picking up a new bait that you have heard about but have had a chance to use. People dropping off or picking up their boats for service will probably take a stroll over to the lures and you may pick up some impulse buys.

I have been wondering about this too. I haven't heard anyone confirm that they are built on the same blank. I know they are built with the same material(scIII) but my understanding is that there is more to a rod blank than the type of carbon that is used such as scrim, tapers and resins among other variables. There are a couple of different companies that use 40ton Toray blanks but have vastly different performance.

Have a friend that bought one of the Shakespeare alpha combos and asked me to see if I could cast with it since he couldn't. I tried using it and struggled to get it to cast even with a 1/2 oz weight. By no means am I an expert with a baitcaster but I have been fishing with baitcast reels almost exclusively for the past 2+ years. If I had started with the alpha combo I would have probably gave up on using a casting reel. I understand that money can be tight and $40-$50 may be all you can afford right now; but if that is the case, do yourself a favor and save more money for a better set up or spend it on something else. If you can come up with $99 in the next 2 weeks the BPS Pro qualifier with a Carbonlite rod combo would be an amazing starting combo that would last you for years.

I pretty much do the same. Adjust the spool tension to it is just shy of backlashing when bait is allowed to fall from the tip of the rod. If I'm tossing something a little heavier I'll run the spool tension just a little more than it takes to prevent side movement

I usually carry a benchmade mini griptillian but sometimes swap in a Kershaw or spyderco. I also keep a bright orange SS Mora companion in the tackle box. I carry a Zebralight H52w flashlight every day and will bring the head band with me when I go fishing. It runs off of a single AA and can run for several hours on the lower settings. It even has some low settings that are so dim that they will not effect your eyes adjustment to darkness. You can also rotate the light in the holder on the headband.

I stopped into one of the local DSG stores and the guy working in the fishing section was wearing a tackle warehouse long sleeve t-shirt. No wonder that store never has any good lures on clearance, they have a fellow addict on the payroll with first shot at all of the good stuff.

I don't know what part of Minnesota you are in but there is a Loomis GL2 on Craigslist in Bemidji for $35. Same seller has a couple Lews reels for 35-75 depending on model and ratio. You our could have a pretty good rod and reel set up for ~$70. I would probably look into it if I wasn't so far away