If there’s one thing that the Robbins family likely does not need it’s fishing tackle. Fortunately, need rarely figures into the equation.

When I was not looking for a brief moment during the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame Induction ceremony, my wife committed to buy 20 or so dollars worth of raffle tickets. Let’s be clear – I would not have resisted, since it’s for a good cause, but I was surprised that she was so eager. After all, until this year she’d never paid for any tackle of her own, and consistently used mostly the best of the best.

With the tickets bought, she asked me which bucket or buckets to put them in for drawing. My response: “Anything but the one full of Googan stuff.” She spread her tickets out strategically and then we went back to socializing. I figured it was 20 bones gone until she yelled out that her number had been called. Fortunately, it was the one that I wanted most, with some new swimbaits and some big ass flutter spoons, plus a bunch of Bass Mafia storage solutions. She got on Tackle Warehouse the next day and figured she’d parlayed that 20 into about 400.

So now we’re at something of an impasse. Between her winnings and her first Tackle Warehouse order earlier this year, she’s amassed quite a selection of stuff I’ll want to use, yet she seems to believe the old martial adage that “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine.” I do, however, have a few tricks up my sleeve. First, she wants an area of the garage for “her” tackle. Second, she’s not yet stripped any reels of line, or respooled them with the fresh stuff. I think there will be a little bit of marital horse-trading going on. Somehow I feel that in terms of this transaction, I’ll end up with the short end of the stick. Nevertheless, if you’d told me 20 years ago that I’d have a wife who owned swimbaits and spoons, let alone one who was fiercely protective and proud of them, I’d have asked what you were smoking. I’d say that’s the ultimate win.