The economy is in a crisis. Gas is too expensive to drive (but optimistically falling). Everyone's wallets are locked up for the holiday season. Santa really will be bringin' coal this year.

BUT! Good news: that doesn't mean your fishing life has to suffer. My vegetarian wife has never been a huge proponent of my ichthyic pursuits. Oddly enough, she was the one to bring home the latest edition to my fly tying bench and one that I was very excited about.

ank" title="Fly Tying Bench"> I had previously been storing all of my fly tying materials and tools in a plastic 3-drawer organizing cabinet, although practical not exactly something you'd like to have stored in plain site about your home.

On a recent trip to the local thrift store she found this great 6-drawer wood organizing cabinet. Not huge, but certainly big enough for my needs. It set her back a whopping $3.99. I spend that much in gas for a day's worth of commuting to work and (my favorite part) back. The best part of this great little cabinet is that we can now store my fly tying kit out in plain site, I don't have to try to hide it when I'm through tying. We live in a small one bedroom townhome, so right now I don't get my own permanently set up bench. For now.

Two other sites I frequent often for great deals and one-of-a-kind finds are craigslist.org and eBay.com. Everyone knows about eBay, but for some, Craigslist is new. It is a great online classified site for cities all over the world where people can buy, sell and barter goods. Even better news; it's free to use (unless you call into a few select categories). The only thing you pay for is whatever you buy off it, which is usually much less expensive than buying it new.

With the cost of living rising and the impact of our presence on earth growing, recycling is becoming more and more important as well. Whoever used to own my new fly tying bench didn't see any further use in it, at least they had the good sense to drop it off at my local thrift shop. My wife did see good in it and now we've recycled it, provided jobs for the people who work at the thrift stores and kept a little bit of someone's trash out of a landfill by putting it into my treasure trove.

Kitsap County, Washington (where I currently reside) has a great program; 2good2toss.com. It's similar to Craigslist with free/for sale/wanted postings for everything to kitchen sinks to beds to wood, however local to Kitsap County only. Your community could have something similar with great deals on lightly used goods waiting for you to take advantage of it. Next time you think about throwing something out that could be reused, maybe you should think about dropping it off at your local thrift store - then go fishing to reward yourself for being so environmentally conscience.