Drop It Like It's Hot

Since first dipping a toe into the swimbait world a few months ago, I’ve had to become familiar with a whole bunch of new terminology, one of which is a “bait drop.”

Historically, I’ve either gone to a store or gone online, and the results have been binary – they either have the tackle I want or they don’t. If they have it, and the price is within the range of self-imposed reasonableness, I buy the item. Or two of them.

But in the high-demand, low-volume swimbait world, it don’t work like that.

Instead, you get a cryptic message on social media, through smoke signals or via ESP that the baits are going to drop at a certain time, in a certain place. If you can get there and fill our your order quickly enough and press the “Buy” button, you might get lucky. Even then, there’s no guarantee of success. Since some buyers try to “flip” the coveted items for higher prices, buyers who purchase too many items may have their efforts rejected.

Is this whole process a means of creating artificial scarcity? Is it a fairer way to do business? Is it ridiculous? For now, I don’t care. It actually added some excitement back into the bait-buying process. When I got word that Working Class Zero (love the name) would be having a bait drop at 9pm on Friday, I took painstaking efforts to make sure that I’d be home and lined up to buy. This wasn’t hard because I effectively have no social life, but still, I had to make sure that Hanna and I were home from dinner, grocery shopping, or Bed Bath and Beyond if she determined that we had enough time. We made it, I made my paltry order, and now I feel like a greater part of the cult. The next step is to receive the baits this week and hopefully fish them next weekend.