Moving the Memories

After living in the same house for 23 years, my wife Hanna and I are planning to move in the next 6-10 months. We don’t know where yet – we’re taking suggestions – but it will certainly be someplace that requires my fishing tackle.

Accordingly, I’ve started to pack up the gear that I’m relatively unlikely to need between now and then. That’s not an insubstantial job, as I’ve accumulated a lot of gear over my 56 years, the last 20+ in the fishing industry. Nor am I just throwing stuff in boxes and duffels. I bought a mega-pack of gallon Ziplocs at Costco and ordered a massive number of banker’s boxes from Amazon. I will likely need more of both.

The system I’ve developed is to categorize each category of lure and then break it down by brand or style. So there might be one box dedicated to jerkbaits, with separate bags for each brand. Within a brand, there might be a bag for deep diving jerkbaits, one for shallow and mid-range jerkbaits, and one for wake baits.

Of course, much of the really good stuff permanently resides in the boat, but nevertheless I continue to be amazed by the treasures that I find. There are some, like WEC E1 crankbaits, special run Vision 110s, Paycheck Baits and Vixen topwaters, that would command top dollar on eBay. There are others that I simply forgot I hoarded back in the day.

The best ones, however, trigger a specific memory: The specialized spinnerbaits I bought during a tournament at the California Delta or the musky spinnerbaits from Minocqua, WI and Walker, MN. There are hand pours I bought in Coeur d’Alene and even genuine Senkos the factory poured for me in a color no one else has. I probably would have been done already if the process hadn’t been so fun and memory-provoking.

And a word to the wise: Be careful how many Senkos you accumulate, or at least how you pack them. Trying to lift a banker’s box full of 6- or 7-inchers may give you a hernia. But it’s worth the weight and the wait.