What on earth am I talking about with that title? Well, if you’ve ever gone fishing with a buddy who doesn’t have all his fishing gear organized you know what I mean. I have had days when I’ve had 20 casts made before my fishing partner had his rod ready and a lure attached. That same person may have lures of all kinds clumped together with no rhyme or reason, making it hard to locate the desired lure and that’s especially irritating when the guy next to you has already hooked three fish.

Now I’ll admit that with the vast array of lures and related tackle available these days a fisherman can end up with quite an assortment of “stuff” to organize and categorize. Admittedly in my early days of fishing I had no problem organizing my lures since all eight of them fit nicely into a tackle box about the size of a small shoe box with room to spare. I’m not sure how it happened but over the years that assortment of lures grew substantially to the point that eventually a much larger tackle box was required to house all of them and to keep them organized for quick use.

Metal tackle boxes eventually gave way to hard plastic tackle boxes and I ended up with one about the size of a Wal-Mart shopping cart without the wheels; in fact it would be easier to tote around if it did have wheels. All the fold out trays were compartmentalized and each tray held a particular type of lure. Other than requiring two people to lift it into the boat; this tackle box served me well for many years. Over time however my lure collection continued to grow and a smaller, soft tackle container was added to house all my soft plastic lures. More than once when boarding a friend’s boat with my tackle boxes for a day of fishing I would be told that we were only going out for the day and not several weeks-nor were we staying over at a motel.

Even with all of this storage I would still be frustrated by not being able to carry certain lures that I thought I might need and then along came the new soft tackle box complete with a shoulder strap for easier carrying. I was reluctant to make the change but eventually I acquired one of the new soft tackle boxes. It’s still about the size of that Wal-Mart shopping cart and only slightly larger than my wife’s purse but it is more versatile. Instead of fold-out plastic trays you now have the option of categorizing your lures in the readily available plastic compartmentalized containers with a lid. The large soft tackle box will easily house four such containers along with several other smaller ones. Now when I go fishing I simply put the lure containers in my tackle box that I think will be appropriate for that particular day of fishing.

If I’m going panfishing I can remove all those containers of bass fishing lures and replace them with lures and tackle more suited for smaller fish. If I’m going for bass on the other hand, I can stock up with mostly bass fishing lures; surface lures in one container, minnow baits in another, divers in another and so forth.

Now, the question sometimes comes up, “Does a fisherman really need to carry all that many lures to go fishing”? The truth is, I may only use three or four different lures all day, but by carrying that assortment of tackle boxes it helps create the impression that you may actually know something about fishing and that alone is worth the effort.