These days we buy more and more stuff online, and that includes everything from bucktails to basic boats. Sometimes we walk away with what looks like super-sweet deals, too, and we hear from our fishing buddies about all the great stuff they found at half off. But, is buying fishing tackle online all it’s cracked up to be? In a word, no…
The picture you see here is of a bunch of shad darts ordered via a huge online shipper. They looked great (as they do in this picture) and cost about a third as much as in the tackle shop (when bought in bulk). This brings us to the first issue with buying online. Much of the time to get a great deal you have to order larger amounts than you normally would. This is fine if the items you purchase turn out as expected. But if not, you’ll have spent more than you would have in the first place to get a big pile of useless lures. These darts turned out to have very rigid, stick-like nylon filaments which produce zero action in the water, plus they were a size too large. I can’t bring myself to even use them because I know darn well that if I do, I’ll catch fewer fish. A whole box of them has been sitting in my closet for better than a year.
The same thing can happen with just about any type of lure, gear, or tackle you click on. And when ordering from some of the sites out there which charge prices that seem unbelievably cheap, the picture of the item you see on the website might not even remotely resemble what arrives in the mail a few weeks later.
Wait a sec – weeks later? Yup. A bonus feature of these uber-cheap foreign sites is that they’re drop-shipping from overseas and it can take up to a month to receive the goods, such as they are.
Buying specific model items from specific known manufacturers online can certainly save you a buck or two, but buyer beware. Ensure that you know exactly what you’re getting, and that you’re ordering from a reputable site. Otherwise, the best move is to get your stuff the old-fashioned way – go to your local tackle shop and actually look at and/or hold the gear in your hands. That way, you’ll know exactly what you’re paying for every time.