Organize for a Leg Up on the Competition
When you take a group of the best from any sport it’s the small things that can determine the outcome. In NASCAR it can be a three second faster pit stop, in football it could be the extra effort that gains the inch needed for a first down. In fishing, it could be the one extra cast you get from being organized.
Unlike many other sports there are no time outs in fishing. If you can’t find that bait you believe is the “one” you’ll be searching for it while the rest of the field is casting it. So how does an angler gain extra time on the water? FLW Tour angler Brent Ehrler gains extra time by being organized. “If I spend a couple minutes looking for a bait several times a day I can waste a lot of time without a line in the water, actually fishing. I have thousands of baits in my boat and when I get a feeling that a particular bait is going to work, I have to find it quickly. If I can cut the search time from a couple minutes to thirty seconds, that can add up..”
Organizing thousands of baits in the storage compartments of a bass boat is no easy task. There are dozens of bait types and hundreds of variations within each of those types. Add to that the hundreds of colors of each and you have an organizational mess. Ehrler uses Plano tackle boxes exclusively to keep his arsenal in arms reach. “Plano has so many sizes and designs, they’ve got a box for everything. Not just a box, a box that keeps the baits from tangling and keeps them safe from damage and corrosion as well. I group the boxes in like types and label them all so I can find the right box immediately. The great part is once I find the box and find the bait, it comes right out, untangled and ready to tie on.”
Ehrler even has separate systems for prefishing and tournaments. Utilizing the deeper ProLatch 7080 storage box for prefishing and smaller boxes for the tournament baits. “I’ll use the ProLatch 7080 to hold all my baits between events and during prefish. Then when I’ve narrowed down my selection I’ll move them into my tournament boxes which are typically from the CDS or FTO family of Plano boxes.”
Non-tournament anglers can benefit from the use of Plano boxes as well according to Ehrler. “When you only have a few days a year you get to fish, you don’t want to spend half of it digging tackle out of poor storage systems. Plano boxes are an inexpensive way to keep all your tackle organized even if you only fish a few times a year.”
Plano boxes aren’t just for fishing either. Plano makes boxes for everything from the medical industry to construction. If you have small items to organize Plano boxes work well. “I like to keep everything organized even at home. I have Plano boxes all over my garage with everything from nuts and bolts to lawn sprinkler fixtures. It’s safe to say I’d be using Plano even if I didn’t chase bass all around the country.”