With so few publicly traded companies containing an angling footprint, and with fishermen a closed mouth lot its always been a struggle to get a feel for the angling economy …

.. but it appears there’s legs to the subsistence fishing notion, as angling bellwether Cabela’s (CAB) posted a fairly robust 6% increase in same store sales yesterday.

As the American consumer has awakened to the New Frugal, retail sales have suffered commensurately – with luxury items and large ticket purchases literally dropping off a cliff.

“As we look ahead into the third quarter, we are even more encouraged by the favorable trends in our retail and direct segments and our ability to tightly manage costs,” Millner said. “For the full year, we now expect total revenue growth and comparable store sales to increase at a low single digit percentage rate as compared to our previous forecast for total revenue growth and comparable store sales to be approximately flat.

This corroborates the survey suggesting an 11% increase in fishing license sales over the first quarter 2009. The prevailing theory is a worsening economy has families vacationing closer to home – with outdoor use replacing the more exotic venues.

… that’s a lot more kids wrinkling their nose at the plate containing a recent conquest.

Tags: Cabela’s quarterly report, subsistence fishing increase, license sales, fishing,