More Tackle, More Better

I’ve traveled pretty widely to fish, both domestically and internationally, and while there have been times when I haven’t had the right tackle (or enough of the right tackle) I can categorically say that you can never have too much of it. Nevertheless, as I pack for each subsequent trip, my wife Hanna laughs at my over-preparation. “Do we really need that?” she’ll ask. Or, “Why do we need so many of those?”

More often than not, by the end of the trip, she realizes that I was right to pack more, not less, gear. If you’re in the Amazon or on an island in Canada, there are no Bass Pro Shops around the corner or Tackle Warehouse deliveries.

We went through this marital ritual before our trip to Lake of the Woods in Canada last week. We were told that the lodge had “plenty of gear,” but I’ll be damned if I was going to trust that assessment. Instead, I crammed Plano boxes, utility binders, and Ziploc bags full of everything under the sun. We’d been told that there’d be a good crankbait bite, some soft plastic action, and maybe some topwater fun, but I expanded on that. I’ve learned my lessons the hard way. It was a good thing that I did because on the first evening there our friend Jennifer found out that the fish would absolutely crush a Chatterbait. We’d brought a few, and when they’d only eat the light-colored ones we cannibalized a few spinnerbait skirts for the cause. Each day, we lost at least one to a toothy critter. The smallmouths continued to bite – but they wouldn’t eat a spinnerbait or a swim jig nearly as well. When I lost my last “good” vibrating jig on the final morning it appeared that we’d just squeaked over the finish line.

It was oddly reminiscent of our second trip to Lake El Salto in Mexico, in May of 2013. At that point, the Chatterbait was comparatively new and we brought only a few. While we caught fish on plenty of other presentations that week, they wanted that vibe. Once again, by the end of the week, our stock was low. The next year we came back at exactly the same time, under virtually exactly the same conditions, armed with 20 or more of them – and I don’t think we caught a single fish on them all week. That year it was a crankbait, Senko, and jig bite.

I know the struggle from both sides. I’ve been the guy who was begging others in a fish camp for a stray lure of a certain variety. I’ve also had strangers come up to me looking like crack addicts needing a fix, and asking for watermelon Senkos. Better to have the tackle and not need it than to have it sitting on the pegboard or on a shelf at home. You can always get by on the same underwear for a couple of days, or wash your shirts in the sink, but you can’t manufacture ribbon tail worms out of whole cloth in a remote location. In fact, if you’re on that once-in-a-lifetime trip, you probably don’t want to be using a Senko that you glued back together or a crankbait with suspect hooks. The point of a fishing trip is to catch fish, so don’t ever let anyone’s ridicule deter you from “overpacking.”

Furthermore, late in the trip, when they come to you looking for a certain bait, be gracious about giving one to them.