How a Plano 3-Tray Tackle Box Changed Our Weekend Trips

Friday night, end of a week of framing, I would throw my soft tackle bag in the truck and head for the lake. By the time I got there, the bag had settled into a tangle. Hooks through the foam. Split shot loose in the bottom. A spinner stuck in the mesh pocket. I would spend the first twenty minutes at the water untangling instead of casting. That was the routine for a couple of seasons, and it was my own fault for keeping the wrong bag.

I am Russ Kettering. I build houses for a living, and I fish the Finger Lakes on weekends from May through October. My gear has to survive being thrown in the bed of a half-ton pickup with a bed cap, parked in the sun, hauled down to the shore. Two years ago I got tired of the tangle and bought a Plano 3-tray tackle box. It was a simple fix. It turned out to be one of those small changes that made every trip easier.

The box lives in the truck bed cap all season. It does not come inside. It sits behind the wheel well, takes the heat of summer, gets bounced over gravel roads, and once took a direct hit from a cooler that slid when I hit the brakes. The latches still hold. The trays still slide. That is the whole review in one sentence, but let me back up and explain why it matters.

Before the Plano, I used a soft bag with one big open compartment. It held a lot, I will give it that. But everything in it touched everything else. Treble hooks found the foam and the mesh and each other. I carried three sizes of hooks and they all ended up in one pile. On a good trip I lost ten minutes to untangling. On a bad trip I lost a lure to a knot I could not undo, and I would cut the line and ruin a good spoon out of frustration.

The Plano has three trays and a bottom compartment, with dual top access so I can open it from either side. The top tray holds the small stuff: split shot, swivels, a few bobbers. The middle tray holds hooks and jig heads, each size in its own slot. The bottom holds the bigger lures and a spare spool of line. I sorted it once, two years ago. It has mostly stayed sorted. That is the real test. Any box looks organized on day one. This one still looks organized at the end of the season.

Two seasons in the bed of a pickup, and the latches still hold and the trays still slide.

I will tell you what I do not like, because every honest review has a weak point. The tray dividers feel a little thin. I have not broken one, but I can see how a hard drop in cold weather could crack a divider. The latches are simple, not the fancy locking kind, and I would not trust the box to stay shut if it took a hard tumble down a bank. I keep it upright in the truck, and it stays shut. That is enough for me.

Kyle came along last summer and borrowed it for a weekend. He is a grown man, not careful with much of anything. He threw the box in the jon boat, set it on the seat, and stepped on it once by accident. Nothing broke. He handed it back and said he might need to get one for himself. That is about as strong a review as a father gets from a grown son.

The other thing I like is that it fits the truck. The box is compact enough to slide behind the wheel well of the bed cap, flat against the side. It does not roll around. It does not dump its contents when I take a corner. I grab it by the handle, one hand, and walk down to the shore. When I fish from the twelve-foot jon boat, it sits on the floor between my feet and stays put.

Terri does not fish much, but she camps with me, and she has her own test. She likes that the box keeps hooks out of the tent. Before, a hook always seemed to work its way out of the bag and into the tent floor, and she would find it with her foot. That has not happened since the Plano. She noticed. That alone was worth the switch.

Last summer we took the one-week trip to a state-park campground on one of the Finger Lakes. I packed the Plano in the truck on day one and did not think about it again until the first morning on the water. That is the point. The box only gets your attention when it stops working. It worked the whole week. We fished the lake shore at dawn, took the jon boat out in the afternoon, and every time I opened the box, the tray I wanted was right where I left it.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you are the kind of person who throws gear in the back of a truck and expects it to be there next weekend, a simple three-tray box is the fix. You do not need a wall of tackle. You need one box that keeps the hooks sorted, survives the summer heat, and stays shut. The Plano 3-tray does that. I have had mine two seasons. The next one I buy will be the same box, and I would say the same thing to any guy on my crew who asks what to carry for a weekend on the water.