Environmental Stewardship, you can do better!

Environmental stewardship needs to become a focal point in the fishing industry. I have a little bit of a bone to pick with some bait companies that are not being good stewards of our environment. I feel it’s their responsibility to lead by example as millions of customers buy their products.  Now, I’m going to come right out and say I’m not one of those crazed, radical environmental nuts, but I do try to do my part to keep our waters clean, and our environment sustainable for the future. Single-use plastic packaging is a big problem and the big bait guys can do something about it.

People who fish are fanatics about brands. When they latch on to a great company, it seems that the company can do no wrong. That being said, there is room for improvement and I hope by reading this, you at least start to think about the message we are trying to convey.

What’s with all the extra plastic?

A recent trip to BassPro with my daughter (12 years old) quickly became a lesson in waste. This year in class they focused on the environment and what they could do to be a little more responsible with the imprint we as humans leave here during our time on earth. One of the bigger issues the class focused on was single-use plastic(s) and how just by changing our habits we could make a huge dent.

As I mostly support local and the “small guy” I rarely ever buy big brand baits and plastics unless they are the talk of the town on the internet. That being said, walking through the plastic isles my daughter quickly pointed out the extra plastic wrapping in each bag and asked why? If you are not familiar with what I’m talking about, read on.

Bait manufactures like Googan Baits, Storm, StrikeKing, and Zman (to name a few) put some of their baits in a plastic clamshell, then into a regular plastic bait bag. What’s the reason for this? Is this for presentation? Or is this because the baits are not durable and will become deformed?

She has a point, what’s the actual purpose of the clamshell?  Lots of folks put them in plastic boxes or purpose-built storage solutions. Then what? The bag and now the clamshell go right into the trash.

When did the clamshell in a plastic bag become a thing? Who came up with that idea? Was the thought process to incur an additional manufacturing cost and packaging step to sell baits? Sounds genius! Remove the clamshell, add a couple of more baits per bag and call it even.

Final Thoughts: we can do better!

As I stated before I buy local or small business first. Occasionally I will buy bigger brands, but I will not buy baits that have all this useless single-use extra plastic in the packaging. Either give me a clamshell or give me a plastic bag, not both. On a good fishing day, you could probably burn through a few bags of plastics and the packaging will just be tossed in the trash unless it flys off your boat at high speed and lands at the bottom of your fishing hole. C’mon guys, you can do better.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject. Environmental stewarship should be part of an overall mission statement that this industry should take on. Am I overreacting? Please leave your comments below or send me a message here.