How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

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Fishing4Fun
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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by Fishing4Fun » Fri Jan 25, 2019 7:44 am

hoohoorjoo wrote:Simple- 20 or so combos on the racks in the garage. 3600 boxes, soft-side cases and big hard boxes all fit on a shelf in the front corner. In spite of all that, I still have stuff strewn all over the garage, on top of the china cabinet, microwave and refrigerator(among other places). I found 4 nib TD Sol reels in the closet amongst my wife's shoes recently. I may have a problem.....
Your problem is contaminating your fishing area with your wife’s shoes!

You should tell them about the barn that holds all of the extras! :whistle:

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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by hoohoorjoo » Fri Jan 25, 2019 8:24 am

Fishing4Fun wrote:
hoohoorjoo wrote:Simple- 20 or so combos on the racks in the garage. 3600 boxes, soft-side cases and big hard boxes all fit on a shelf in the front corner. In spite of all that, I still have stuff strewn all over the garage, on top of the china cabinet, microwave and refrigerator(among other places). I found 4 nib TD Sol reels in the closet amongst my wife's shoes recently. I may have a problem.....
Your problem is contaminating your fishing area with your wife’s shoes!

You should tell them about the barn that holds all of the extras! :whistle:
I try to forget about the barn. :oops: Probably a few more NIB reels out there, too. There is so much NIP lures and such in there that my wife should be able to pay for my funeral expenses after a yard sale or 2. :lol: Heck, I have 8 or 9 of those huge plastic storage tubs full of parts reels. Probably in excess of 300 parts reels. :doh: OK, now that I'm actually thinking about it, pretty sure I do have a problem..... 8-[
Try not to let your mind wander. It is much too small to be outside unsupervised.

Fishing4Fun
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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by Fishing4Fun » Fri Jan 25, 2019 9:37 am

hoohoorjoo wrote:
Fishing4Fun wrote:
hoohoorjoo wrote:Simple- 20 or so combos on the racks in the garage. 3600 boxes, soft-side cases and big hard boxes all fit on a shelf in the front corner. In spite of all that, I still have stuff strewn all over the garage, on top of the china cabinet, microwave and refrigerator(among other places). I found 4 nib TD Sol reels in the closet amongst my wife's shoes recently. I may have a problem.....
Your problem is contaminating your fishing area with your wife’s shoes!

You should tell them about the barn that holds all of the extras! :whistle:
I try to forget about the barn. :oops: Probably a few more NIB reels out there, too. There is so much NIP lures and such in there that my wife should be able to pay for my funeral expenses after a yard sale or 2. :lol: Heck, I have 8 or 9 of those huge plastic storage tubs full of parts reels. Probably in excess of 300 parts reels. :doh: OK, now that I'm actually thinking about it, pretty sure I do have a problem..... 8-[

When you redraft your will, please make sure I am the sole benificerary of the barn!

smallies
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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by smallies » Wed Jan 30, 2019 6:13 pm

My fishing stuff is much more organized than anything else I own lol

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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by Creekin » Wed Feb 20, 2019 12:39 pm

If you ask me, my fishing gear is organized...if you ask my wife, she will have a different opinion on the matter! :lol: I have the rods I use the more frequently in the corner of our bedroom away from our 2 year old daughter. I have my most used tackle in the top shelf of a closet in our hallway. All my rods and tackle the doesn't get used as much is in our storage unit in a big rubbermaid box. One of these days we will have a bigger house with a garage so I can keep all my stuff in one place.

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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by romans » Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:55 pm

I had to step up to a fishing "room" years ago. It was either that, or figure out how to organize my closet.

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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by Impreza619 » Tue Jun 18, 2019 1:48 pm

1 big ass tuff shed ... separate from the house :lol:

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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by edwelch1 » Wed Jun 19, 2019 8:18 am

I don't really have a fishing closet, because I decided to set myself up with basically all new gear this year, finally getting away from using all of my dad's stuff that's in boxes on shelves in the garage at the cabin, and I went for a min/max approach. In other words, tried to minimize my footprint while maximizing my variety for the fishing that I do most, as well as maximizing my mobility.

I wanted to be able to bring my essentials with me anywhere with ease, yet still have a good arsenal at my disposal. 99% of the time I'm going after walleye or panfish from my dad's or my boat, or from the dock at the cabin, sometimes out with a buddy in their boat, so I wanted to make my setup extremely mobile. 99% of that 99% is done using 1/32-1/4oz ball head jigs vertically jigging/a slow jigging retrieve, or slip bobber fishing. So, I pretty much set myself up with all new tackle for that, as well as a bunch of plastics, because I challenged myself to a full year of using artificial baits (haven't been skunked yet this year [knock on wood], and I've been competitive with my buddies/dad using live bait, so success so far!).

For organization I was able to fit everything into just two Plano Weekend Series 3500 Tackle Bags, one for tackle, one for baits. Each bag holds five 3500 trays, and the 3 zippered pockets are filled to the brim, as well as the one large mesh exterior pocket on each bag.

Tackle Bag Trays:
1. VMC Neon Moon Eye Jigs, in 1/32, 1/16, and 1/8oz, as well as some 1/8oz Clam Drop Tg jigs, 1/10oz Z-Man Finesse Shroomz, and some experimental tungsten jigs I'm toying with making myself (because buying them is too expensive for how snaggy my lakes are, lol). Also holds swivels and snap swivels.
2. Fireball jigs in assorted colors, 1/32, 1/16, and 1/8 oz.
3. Fireball jigs in assorted colors, 1/4 and 3/8oz.
4. Assorted crappie FluFlu/Marabou jigs, little Mepps Aglia inline spinners, and a couple of tiny Rapalas (bluegills have been nailing the little silver/black size 04 X-Rap!)
5. Slip Bobber tackle, including bobbers, bobber stops, beads, swivels, split shot sinkers, and hooks

Tackle Bag Pockets:
Rapala Pliers, lanyard with nippers/UV light/eye punch, Rapala line scissors, small fillet knife, side cutters, leatherman, gel superglue, Seaguar 8lb and 4lb Blue Label Leader Material, Yo-Zuri 8lb Fluoro Leader Material, small spool of Maxima Chameleon 6lb mono for leader material, Rub-away stainless steel bar "soap" (for getting northern pike slime off my hands), hand sanitizer, BaitMate Flip&Dip tub in Tournament Strength with Garlic, Aux cord/bluetooth receiver/remote for my boat stereo.

Bait Bag Trays:
1. Bobby Garland Baby Shads
2. Bobby Garland Mo'Glo Baby Shads
3. Berkley 2" Ripple Shads, Powerbait 2" minnows, Lake Fork Baby Shads, some tiny 1" white curly tail grubs and some other little 1.5" white crappie plastics that I forget the brands/names of currently.
4. Berkley 3" Ripple Shads, Impulse 3" Live Paddle Minnows, Lunkerhunt 3" Leeches (been pretty hot so far!), BioSpawn 4.5" Plasmatail in black/blue, Strike King 3" Baby Z-Too Minnows
5. Z-Man Finesse TRDs (just added these, looking forward to seeing if walleye will hit them), and space for overflow/used plastics

Bait Bag Pockets:
Gulp 5" Leeches in a small mason jar, Gulp pinched crawlers, Gulp chartreuse 1.5" Minnows, Gulp red Angleworms, Powerbait Power Honey Worms in yellow and natural, Powerbait chartreuse Crappie Nibbles, Bobby Garland Mo'Glo Slab Jam, Atlas Mike's UV Gel Scent in Anise/Garlic Nightcrawler/Walleye scents, Atlas Mike's Lunker Lotion in Walleye scent, 1.5cc syringe with blunt needle for scent application, and a stringer that was my grandpa's.

As for rods/reels, I only have 2 rigs, but they cover all of my bases for that 99% of my fishing. I have a 6'10" GL2 DSR that was my old primary, with a Pfleuger Patriarch 25 on it. That's now my backup, or used when I'm fishing the 1/4 or 3/8oz jigs. My new rig that I picked up this spring is a Legend Elite Panfish 6'4" Light Extra Fast, with a Daiwa Tatula LT 1000. I've been loving that for the lighter weight fishing that I'm doing, and it has been proving extremely capable. Over this next winter I'm hoping to replace the GL2 by custom building on a Phenix K2 blank with titanium torzite guides, but otherwise I'm really happy with my 2 rigs as they are.

Overall, it doesn't matter much where I keep my stuff, because it's such a compact package. 2 small bags and 2 rods doesn't take up much space, and it covers 99% of my fishing. Half the time the bags are sitting on my kitchen table and the rods are hung across the antlers of my whitetail shoulder mount I have on my wall, the other half of the time my stuff is in the back of my Tahoe in the garage ready to go for the next trip. Min/maxing has worked out very well for me so far, as it keeps me very flexible, only having to grab the couple of bags and couple of rods in order to bring pretty much all of my gear along wherever I'm headed. I'm sure over time I'll cycle some baits out of the trays as I find that I don't like them, or I just want to try new ones, but for right now I still have a ton to experiment with before thinking about adding anything more. Whenever that happens, I'll just grab more 3500 trays to keep on a shelf in a closet somewhere and just cycle through trays that I want to bring along.
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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by zodiak311 » Wed Jun 19, 2019 10:35 pm

I use to have a fishing "closet," that eventually became a fishing room.
Then I started doing saltwater as well, and now I have a partial fishing garage as well.

I have boxes and boxes of lures in cabinets, racks that are mounted above my desk. Another wall rack with rods that don't have reels on them, and another rack for combos.

Reel parts and tools all over my "study" table, and soft plastics in some large plastic cabinets,.

Basically, I am not organized...
Get your kids hooked on fishing, and they'll never have any money for drugs or alcohol.

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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by scrapiron » Fri Jun 21, 2019 7:02 am

Some really great systems in this thread.

I keep my rods on a rod rack (that aluminum one I forget the name) and reels on the ones in rotation.

Tackle is on either on pegboards or in clear cases. Line is on pegboard with the exception of FC which is in a small drawer. The peg board was really the game changer as it organizes plastics, line, hardbaits and everything is easy to see.

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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by eklikewhoa » Sun Mar 14, 2021 9:39 am

I sort with Tupperware, stacks nicely in the closet and will keep smells inside

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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by Dalleinf » Sun Mar 14, 2021 11:49 am

80-ish baitcasters/round reels in reel cases and 50-ish spare spools under bed. Well organized.

Large amount of rods, spinning reels, deep sea reels, 6x waders, nets, and a shitload of lures/tackle in garage stacked againts wall, on table and in 5-6 closets. Another tornado went through a bass pro :lol:

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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by DarkShadow » Thu Mar 25, 2021 12:18 am

It was 4.5 years after I started this thread?

In any case, after all that time, I think I have a pretty good grasp on how to handle the organization.

I bought some Rubbermaid storage shelves that go across my wall that is 15 feet across. I have a ton of Plano 3700s, in the different configurations. I have the one compartment boxes for all my plastics, and the multiple compartment configurations for my hard baits. With a bunch of shelves, I can stack all the boxes I need. The rods and reels have a rack in the corner.

Wading gear and fly gear has its own section, although 20 or so flyboxes take up a lot less space than bass gear, I'll tell you that for free.

The key is to have a method of grabbing stuff that is needed for that specific trip. Before, I used to throw stuff into any box, and throw any box into a random bag and be out. Now, I have dedicated boxes that I fill before trips, and move baits back from to their larger boxes after returning home from a trip.

I think I just might get a boat and throw the entire closet inside the storage compartments like my other buddies do. That way I can make more room in my fishing closet for stuff that'll never see the light of day.

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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by Bbrotz » Mon Jun 07, 2021 7:31 pm

I bought a metal pegboard from Uline about a year ago to keep all my soft plastics, hardbaits, line and terminal tackle organized. It was on the expensive side but it is built well and will last a lifetime. I usually store my Plano boxes underneath it but they are all in the kayak right now. I also built my own rod rack out of some reclaimed wood that can hold 11 combos. This system works pretty good for me but once I get my own house I will probably end up making a dedicated fishing room.
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Re: How Do You Keep Your Fishing Closet Organized?

Post by Shadowcaster1969 » Wed Oct 27, 2021 4:34 am

I INTENTIONALLY ensure that my fishing gear closet looks like a tornado ripped through a tackle Shop.... So that my wife would not notice that occassional extra rod and reel, or two or three, or four..... :lol:

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