Organizing Soft Plastics

[crzyjunyer]

im looking for tips and ideas on how to organize all my soft plastics in my fishing gear - i recently got a bag to hold 3700 size (14x9) plastic boxes for all my crankbaits and wire baits but am stumped when it comes to my plastics - i looked at more of the boxes but they wont hold enough per box it seems and the same is true for binders it seems

im always the co-angler even when i take my own boat (its really my dads he rarely uses but he made big boat payments so he gets big storage boxes) so im basicly limited to what i can get in my tacklebox - i have already gone a long ways in making it easy for me to find exactly what im looking for at a quick glance in the boxes im using now - i labled each box to waht is in it (topwater, shallow divers, med divers, deep/lipless, jigs, and so on)

ive looked at using the gallon zip lock bag approach and orgainzing by type but im really wanting something faster/easier than digging in a bag to find the color/style i want - ive looked at just getting some small boxes and turning them on end but i can only get maybe 3-4 bags in each one and buying that many boxes would add up in a hurry on cost (less cost= more gas in boat/truck to go)

i was wondering if anyone on here has any other suggestions or ideas on what to do to keep things organized and neat to make changes faster and easier on the water

[Braided Line]

I`ve never used boxes to store my plastics in. The biggest reason, they take up to much space. I prefer to store my soft plastics in their original bags

.

Living in Fl with all it`s grass, pad fields and other types of vegetation, soft plastic baits are almost the main stay in my arsenal. That being said, I have bags and bags of them. You name it ,I`ve got it. many times over.

With these many "selections" I need to keep them seperated. Hence I use small gym type bags to do just that. Different types in there own bag. When I need say something to flip with I have one for flipping plastics. One for most any type of action required. You can pack them in as there``re not a "hard body" like a plastic box.

I don`t have a problem looking through the "bag" as more than once I seem something else I liked better. All the bags are marked as to what they contain......what type.

Been doing it this way for many years and have never looked back. As they say. Different strokes for different folks.

If you (anybody) only have say 25-30 bags, then plastic boxes migh be the way to go. J s/n.

[BobP]

I don't store baits in my boat. I have a soft side tackle bag that holds my hardbaits, jigs, and spinnerbaits in medium size plastic boxes. For the plastics, I don't try to keep every plastic I own in the boat. I have a zippered 12"L x 8'W x 8"H Tackle Logic bag that originally had envelopes held in place by a ring binder. I got tired of stuffing plastics in envelopes pretty quickly, so I took the envelopes out and just throw plastics in their original bags in there. I'll mix them up depending on the season/day. It will hold 20 bags of plastics. If I can't find something they'll bite with that many choices, I shouldn't be let loose on the lake. Limiting my choices from the 200 bags of plastics I own has actually improved my fishing.

[crzyjunyer]

well for right now i more or less gave in and organized them into bags - until i find a better way - i only have around 60 diffrent bags (mfg bags) i use - i will probably condense it down some more on to what actually makes it onto the boat and leave some in the truck (i know if i leave some at home and keep the fave's in my bag the ones at home will be the color they are hitting on my trip to eufaula in 2 weeks) - i reckon it will be like my painting on cranks - ill know what i can do when i see/brain fart it - lol

[Richard Prager]

If I am going to a fish a place that is different from the previous body of water fished, then a new selection is made just for those waters. All the bags go into a rather large soft sided bag only used for plastics. I've learned to leave the plastics in their bags. Once I get out on the water I usually end up fishing out of the same one or two bag of baits the whole trip! If I didn't bring it all with me I would have been saying, "if I only had.....

[crzyjunyer]

thats me - normally i fish an one of the coosa lakes here (weiss or neely henry) or over at my buddys lake and i know what i like to throw at either of them - i just have alot of other ones i like to have in diffrent colors - the main ones i have the biggest selection of is my jig trailers - lots of styles and colors - espeically in black or blue - after that i have about 3 diffrent colors i use regulary (red, chartruce, pumpkinseed) but i hve diffrent styles and such in those colors ill try - i just hate being out there and finding out that they are gobbling up a certain color and its at home :/

[DropShot'r]

I store all my plastics in BPS Finesse Binder Bags: http://www.basspro.com/Bass-Pro-Shops-Finesse-Binder-Bags-or-Replacement-Pages/product/37109/83141

I find the large size is perfect for my tackle needs. I have 5 of them in my tackle bag one for Senkos, Dropshot, Tubes, Beavers & Trailers. Buy extra pages for the binders...they hold a lot of stuff.

I use the medium Finesse Binder Bag as a spinnerbait wallet.

Drop

[ROWINGADUBAY]

I use the medium sized bass pro shops binder they work out awesome best thing I have found for plastics they have some heavier side pouches for hooks,jigs, and sinkers, some times all I take with me is the binder.

[Bassun]

I like to have as many options as possible, especially when fishing for cash. While I 100% agree with BobP that a smaller number of choices will help you become better at using those particular items, if I see a good option but left that bag at home it would really put a damper on things. I completely subscribe to the idea of taking only one type of lure out for learning, but if you are working that's a different ballgame.

I personally use two bags. One large "gym bag" that holds 3700's labeled the same way you did. I also keep my spinners / buzzbaits in a square box AND i keep one more tupperware style with a hinged lid of about the same size with my expected plastic selection. Generally I keep it chock full of Flukes (my personal confidence and go to bait for everything from brush to docks. Depending on where and when, it could be full of swimbaits, or grubs, maybe tubes, etc. I also keep one empty box labeled "USED". Anytime I swap out lures I put the "used" lure in the used box. This way I can look back at what I had no or low success on and sometimes see a pattern that I may have overlooked. It also makes for a good case study after the tournament to look in there and think about why it didn't work or why you even tried it. As a bonus, it's much faster to just drop a used lure back in there then reorginize the next day. It's funny how often you see oddball lures in there that you have no idea why you even tried when things get going really badly. I also use some of the smaller (3500 I think) stored in one of the end pouches to keep hooks, sinkers, etc. and some other small / finess lures in all labed with a sharpie as well.

The other bag, I call my worm bag and is what you were actually asking about. I tried flip binders, which look really nice, but are a pain to use in my opinion. I tried putting worms in plastic boxes for about a week and realized that was just about as bad of an idea as I could have had. So I ended up using a compartmentalized bag. It worked great. I had two main compartments inside and two smaller "end" compartments. I keep creature baits like Brush-Hawgs, Lizards, etc. in one end compartment all in thier original bags. I keep grubs in the other end compartment. For the two bigger compartments I kept finess / small worms in one side, and larger worms etc. in the other- again everything in its original bag. If I had a third main compartment, then I would put my swimbaits / flukes / etc in it, but it didn't so they lived with the finess worms. I ripped the bottom out of that bag and now have one with no middle dividers at all so I just put the createure baits and grubs in the opposite ends, the rest in the bag. It's not as effective (those dividers really help), but still works better than the flip files, or boxes, or anything else for me. I guess I could sew in dividers...but for now it works.

Oh, I do, however, keep prerigged swimbaits in my main tackle bag in a 3700. It doesnt hold too many, but if you are running Alabama rigs its much easier to keep groups of five rigged and ready in a hard box so you can quickly change out the size or color in the fall. I store the frames and the baits all in the same box so if I decide to throw the rig, I just grab the set up I want, and load it up. No time wasted rigging the swimbaits. I would suggest using a sealed box for this vs a cheap box. I "try" to only use them on the A-Rigs but I catch myself too often grabbing a single swim bait out of there instead of rigging one up, lol.

I don't know if that helps any at all, but that's what I do and have very little time wasted looking for stuff (especially with my old worm bag). I would suggest deciding how many compartments you would like to have, then find a bag that fits your needs. If money is no object, then you can considered camera bags as they often have multilple adjustable compartment dividers ... but you will likely pay out the nose. Good luck!

[bluetickhound]

There's actually an article by Charlie Hartley on this very subject that came up on my Facebook page yesterday.