CapMel.com - The "Case" for hard tackle boxes

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The "Case" for hard tackle boxes
By CAPT. MEL BERMAN, 970-WFLA

Up front, you should know that I am a reformed soft tackle bag user. When those squishy canvas gems were introduced some years back, I lunged at them with the fervor of a first time Viagra user. In my brief flirtation with the soft-siders, I enjoyed flinging the bag over my back when hiking to and hopping into the boat. It was almost a feeling of liberation. Yet there loomed ahead problems that turned me completely around on these canvas contraptions. My first misgiving arose when, upon removing the inside plastic lure boxes, the whole case collapsed like a slit-open sack of potatoes. Try smushing around for your pliers in that mess.

Then, one day I reached for the trusty camera I had stored in one of the several side pockets. The rim of my lens was crunched like a punch in the nose and, to compound the outrage, the less than waterproof carrier imparted a rusty coat of corrosion across the base of my expensive Nikon camera.

Yes the softies are fun. Just don’t fill it with anything you wouldn’t want squished, crunched or corroded. After several injurious trips, I went back to my roots – the hard tackle box.

For around 25-bucks I picked up a Plano Guide series box. I was home again. What a pleasure it was to be able shove in, as George Carlin might say, "lots of my stuff!"

Admittedly, I am the original member of the "Tackle box From Hell Brigade." I need to take, not only the usual boxes loaded with soft and hard baits, but also extra spools filled with line, material, extra nail clippers (my dentist talked me out of using my teeth), a hand towel, towel, snack crackers, raisins, a radio, Band-Aids, Tylenol, sunscreen, insect repellant, several pairs of needlenose pliers, extra sunglasses, glasses cleaner, toothpicks, an AM/FM radio, a cel-phone --- even a small GPS. And yes, I can shove most of that junk right in the top section of my macho plastic Plano.

Then there’s this neat little compartment right in the edge of the top cover where I keep my favorite DOA Shrimp and TerrorEyz lures. But we’ve only begun with this waterborne closet.

Flip open that the big front cover and there, before your very eyes, are revealed three larger plastic boxes filled to the brim with just about every kind of lure I’ll ever need on any given fishing trip.

You see, for those of us who are drastically paranoid about not having "the right stuff," the cavernous hard case sooths this savage’s breast.

Best of all, you can bang it, splash it, rock it, roll it, and my hard tackle box takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

So all you wimps keep carrying those colorfully inviting, but hazardous soft tackle bags. It takes a real man to haul a loaded hard plastic tackle box!