“When I die, just don’t let my wife sell my tackle for what I told her I paid for it.”

Fortunately, everything’s transparent in my household. My wife doesn’t necessarily approve or even know about every tackle purchase, but she could if she wanted to. I’m not hiding it, especially because she ends up using quite a bit of it herself. The spoiled girl never had to use balky, subpar, zero-bearing reels, or fiberglass tomato stake rods. She started right off with the good stuff.

But I digress. I just finished my accounting of my fishing business and my fishing-related expenses for 2024 and was not in the least surprised to see that I spent $2,377.55 on fishing tackle. I’d guess that’s about normal, which is unexceptional for someone of my age and salary (with no kids, just a really bad fishing habit), who also already owns more tackle than he could ever use in multiple lifetimes.

Looking through my spreadsheet, I see multiple Tackle Warehouse orders in the $70 to $250 range (anyone who spends less than $50 at TW and loses out on the free shipping is in my opinion both an idiot and an underachiever). Nevertheless, just about half of that amount came in the form of two items – A Shimano Stella 14000 reel that I bought for tuna popping, and a glide bait that I got “on the drop” near the end of the year.

Both items are indulgences, to be sure – the most I’ve ever spent on a reel by several hundred dollars, along with the most I’ve ever spent on a single lure. I do hope, however, that they’re reflective of my future purchases. Most of us have plenty of worms, Senkos, craws, and the like. Those old Rat-L-Traps with the paint chewed off of ‘em work just as well as the shiny new ones. And if you’re anything like me, you buy 20 or so new jigs a year and stick ‘em in a drawer with a few hundred more. I fished a total of two swim jigs (one white, one black/blue) for the entirety of the spring, yet somehow more spawned on the pegboard as the year progressed.

So what I hope to do going forward is not just to buy for the sake of buying, or because something looks like it might be slightly better than what I already have, or because I have an unreasonable fear that a product I don’t even use may someday be discontinued.

Instead, I’ll buy more strategically, better quality rather than unnecessary quantity. I won’t necessarily spend less – I might actually end up spending more – but I’ll place more value in each piece, treating them better, and thereby enhancing the overall experience.