The Gear I Actually Take on Every Single Fishing Trip

 After thirty years I've stopped guessing. This is what's always in the bag.

I've owned a lot of fishing gear over the years. More than I'd like to admit, more than I've ever needed, and considerably more than my wife thinks is reasonable for a man who fishes a river twenty minutes from his house.

But somewhere around year fifteen of fishing the Tennessee River regularly, my approach to gear changed. I stopped thinking about what I might need and started paying attention to what I actually used. Trip after trip, season after season, the same things came out of the bag. The rest sat untouched.

These days my fishing bag is light. Everything in it earns its place. Here's exactly what's in it and why.

The Rod and Reel Setup

I fish two rods on most trips. Not one, not six — two.

The first is a medium-fast spinning rod in the 7-foot range paired with a quality mid-range spinning reel spooled with 10 lb fluorocarbon. This handles about 70% of what I do on the river — soft plastics, lighter jigs, finesse presentations when the water is clear or the fish are pressured.

The second is a medium-heavy baitcasting rod, also 7 feet, paired with a baitcaster spooled with 17 lb fluorocarbon. This is my heavy cover rod — flipping jigs into brush, throwing spinnerbaits, working bigger crankbaits along the riprap banks.

Two rods cover almost every situation I encounter on the Tennessee. If I'm wading or in the kayak I'll sometimes drop to one — the spinning setup, because it handles more range — but in the boat it's always both.

I've fished with more rods than this. I've fished days where I brought six rods rigged with different presentations, rotating through them systematically. My catch rate on those days was not meaningfully better than days with two. The extra rods were mostly anxiety management.

Terminal Tackle

I carry less of this than most anglers my age, which is probably because I lost years of time to carrying too much of it.

Hooks: Wide gap offset hooks in 3/0 and 4/0 for soft plastics. Straight shank flipping hooks in 4/0 for jig trailers and heavier cover work. Extra trebles in two sizes for crankbait replacements. That's it.

Weights: Bullet weights in 3/16, 1/4, and 3/8 oz. Tungsten where I can justify the price difference — which is primarily when I'm fishing deeper water where sensitivity matters. On shallow presentations I'll use lead. The fish don't know the difference.

Jig heads: Round ball heads in 1/8 and 1/4 oz for swimming soft plastics. Football heads in 3/8 and 1/2 oz for dragging deep structure. Four sizes, two styles, done.

Swivels and snaps: A small container of barrel swivels in two sizes. I use them less than I used to — I've found that most presentations are fine without them — but they earn their small amount of space for specific applications.

Everything fits in a single medium soft tackle wallet. I can find anything in it in under ten seconds without looking. That matters more than having every conceivable option available.

Lures

Five categories, nothing more.

Green pumpkin soft plastic. A 7-inch straight worm and a creature bait in the same color. Texas-rigged, these cover more situations on the Tennessee than anything else in my bag. Bottom fishing, swimming, pitching into cover — the same basic presentation, adjusted for depth and weight.

Spinnerbait in white or chartreuse. 3/8 oz for most situations, 1/2 oz when there's current or I want to get deeper. This is my searching lure — I throw it when I'm covering water looking for active fish rather than targeting specific structure.

Medium-diving crankbait in shad colors. For the riprap banks and rocky points. I want something that deflects off rock and suspends briefly on the pause. Natural shad patterns work year-round on the Tennessee.

Jig in brown or green pumpkin. 3/8 oz with a matching craw trailer. My most versatile bottom lure and the one I reach for when the soft plastic worm isn't getting commitment from fish I know are there.

Topwater walking bait in bone or chrome. Early morning, calm water, fall season. When the shad schools are being pushed to the surface and bass are blowing up underneath them, nothing else makes sense.

If something isn't on that list, it's not in the bag.

Fishing Line

I carry two spare spools — one of 10 lb fluorocarbon, one of 17 lb fluorocarbon — and a small pair of line scissors that live in the front pocket of the bag permanently.

I re-tie more often than most anglers. Every hour of fishing, I clip off two or three feet from the working end, check for abrasion, and re-tie my lure. It takes ninety seconds. The number of fish I've stopped losing to line failure since I started doing this consistently is not something I can quantify, but it's real.

Fresh line at the start of every season, re-spooled. No exceptions.

Tools

A multi-tool that's been in my bag for eleven years and has earned its place many times over. Pliers for hook removal, a knife blade for cutting through situations that scissors can't handle, a flathead tip for adjusting reel screws when something comes loose.

Long-nose pliers in addition to the multi-tool specifically for deep hook removal. The multi-tool pliers are fine for most situations but the reach isn't there when a bass has swallowed a hook. Long-nose pliers have saved me a lot of time and the occasional hand injury.

A hook sharpener. Small, flat, lives in the front pocket. I touch up hooks after every snag and before I start a new fishing session. A sharp hook is not a minor variable — it is the variable at the moment of the hookset. Everything else in the bag exists to get a fish to bite. The hook sharpener is what actually catches them.

Polarized sunglasses. Not technically in the bag but always on my face or around my neck. On the Tennessee, being able to see into the water — spotting submerged structure, watching how current moves around cover, occasionally seeing fish before you cast to them — is a genuine competitive advantage. Any angler who doesn't fish with polarized lenses is missing a layer of information that's available for forty dollars.

What's Not in the Bag

Fish scents. I've used them, tested them over multiple trips, never found consistent evidence that they made a measurable difference in my catch rate. They're also messy and they get on everything.

Bobbers. I haven't fished a bobber since my early twenties and I don't miss them.

A tackle box with forty lures. I had this for years. The extra lures didn't help. They gave me something to stare at when the fishing was slow, which is a different kind of value but not the one I was looking for.

Live bait supplies. I fish artificials exclusively these days. This is personal preference as much as anything — I just like the discipline of making a fish react to something that isn't alive. If the fishing is genuinely terrible and you want to catch fish rather than practice a philosophy, live bait is a completely reasonable choice. It's just not mine.

Why Less Is More

The most useful thing that happened when I cut my gear down was that I stopped second-guessing myself on the water.

When you have eight rods and sixty lures, every slow period becomes a gear decision. Maybe the wrong rod. Maybe the wrong lure. Maybe a different color. You spend mental energy rotating through options when you should be paying attention to what the water is telling you.

With two rods and five lure categories, there's almost nothing to second-guess. If the fish aren't biting, it's not my gear — it's my location, my timing, or my presentation. Those are problems I can actually solve by moving, waiting, or slowing down.

That mental clarity is worth more than any lure I've ever left in the graveyard drawer.

Barret Duncan has been fishing the Tennessee River and North Alabama lakes for over twenty years. He writes about gear, technique, and thirty years of hard lessons from the water.