Thanks again for the help guys. I went to Bob Marriots with my wife today and kind of regret it. Not the shop, but taking my wife. She liked it at first, but somewhere after 15min towards an hour her disposition changed from, "Wow thats neat" to "Honey, are you done yet?" to quite silence interposed with promising glares of what life would be like if I spent another 5 minutes talking about flex, rod weight, line weight, etc.

Anyways, thanks again for the heads up on the staff. Bud unfortunately has just retired as of last week, and had moved up to Montana. When I walked in one of the pro staff, Steve, greeted me and offered to help if I had any questions. I wanted to look around first and said so and after eventually finding my way over to the rods I got asked again by another staff member (Joe Libeu). He was very friendly and polite and asked how he could help. I let him know I was just getting into the sport and wanted to get my own set up. (I had declined my dads offer to borrow a set from him) And after he asked how much I was willing to spend on a rod I told him I thought $150 was a good starting point as I am still new and unsure what would be best or even if I might end up not liking the sport as much as I thought. After hearing how much I was wanting to spend this guys attitude changed on a dime. He suddenly remembered that he had to go and said "I have to go" pretty much to my face and then he found another staff member (Alejandro) to take care of me. I apologized rather loudly for "Not being the kind of customer he would have liked!" I suppose he heard that because he came back and made some excuses that he had called his wife 10 min. ago to tell her he was headed home. I frankly don't believe he would have suddenly remembered that had I said I was looking to spend at least 4 to 5 hundred.

Thanks for letting me vent. All that being said, I did enjoy Steve and Alejandro and will take the Joe guy with a grain of salt. I was just very disappointed by getting that kind of customer service even though I had read about similar experiences in another section of this BBS

I ended up leaving with a number of catalogues and have resigned to do some more research before I purchase a set up. Oh, I will also leave the wife behind next time as well.

Thanks again for the helpful advice on fishing locations and stores. I will post again if I have any other update.