Ideas to Store Your Hard Baits

We recently featured a FishVault article about ways to store your soft plastic baits. In today’s article, we are flipping the script and looking at ways to organize your hard baits.

We’ve found that developing a system for storing tackle, hard baits in particular, has really helped us stay organized and keep a good inventory of what we have on hand. This not only ensures the baits are readily available when you go looking for them, but you’re also able to assess inventory quicker and order more of a certain lure if you’re running low. So let’s dive into what that looks like.

Waterproof Tackle Trays

Most of us at FishVault like to start with a 3700 deep tackle tray with a waterproof seal. We have included several versions of these in recent FishVault boxes. These are great for storing lots of baits and the seal ensures that no moisture will get it. The latter is extremely important since water is the number one enemy for hard plastic baits. Even the slightest bit of moisture can cause the split rings and hooks on a bait to rust and corrode and make for a real mess, especially when storing several baits together. So starting with a quality box is important.

Rust Inhibitors

Inevitably, some moisture is going to get into the box, whether it slips your mind and you toss a bait back in the box a little too soon, have to open it up in the rain or even live in the South— where the humidity alone at times is thick enough for the moisture in the air to begin the rusting process. Basically, no matter what, a little moisture is going to get in. This is why we like to throw a rust inhibitor into each box. Several companies make products like these, including Flambeau and Bullfrog, and they do a great job of preventing rust from that little bit of moisture that inevitably gets in.

Treble Hook Caps

Our team likes to use a fairly open box, with either no walls at all or sometimes just a few dividers. Taking the walls out makes it a lot easier to pack several baits in one box, making the most of the investment you’ve made at this point in a quality box. But without the walls, you’ll need some way to keep the hooks of the baits from getting intertwined. This is why we use treble hook safety caps. These do a great job of not only keeping the baits from being a tangled chain of twenty lures when I go to grab one, but they also keep you from getting hooked and keep the hooks from scratching the baits while they’re bouncing around in the box.

With a good deep tackle tray, a couple packs of treble hook caps and a rust inhibitor, you can safely store dozens of hard baits and rest assured they’re not getting scratched up or rusting. And if you use one of the featured tackle storage items we’ve included in our FishVault fishing subscription boxes, you are not going to be fighting a tangled up mess for the next 20 minutes. So if you’re looking for a great way to store your hard baits, give this a try and let us know what you think.