That is correct you don’t need expensive gear to catch fish,sure if you are pulling in lots of hard fighting fish every trip it would be worth it.In most cases having a longer rod will allow a longer cast,but if the rod is a bit short and you can’t get it out to a particular spot then you’d wish you had a longer rod.As for reels your best bet would to have a look at the Penn slammer 560 or 760 possibly a spinfisher.