Fishing is the only hobby where the equipment spends its working life being attacked by the thing it is used in. Salt water eats reels. Fresh water gets into everything and stays. Sand works into bearings, hooks rust in closed boxes, rod tips snap in car boots, and phones sink – always in the deepest water within reach. Ask any angler what they have lost or wrecked over the years and you will get a list, told with the specific bitterness of someone who knew better. 🎣
The list is remarkably similar from one angler to the next, whether they fish carp lakes in Poland, chalk streams in England, the Baltic from a kayak or the Mediterranean from a boat. The same ten things fail in the same three ways: they rust, they snap, or they sink. Once you see the pattern, protecting them stops being a matter of luck and becomes a matter of habit.
This article goes through those ten items one by one: what actually goes wrong, why, and what experienced anglers do to prevent it. Some of the answers are routines that cost nothing – rinsing, drying, storing hooks properly. Some are equipment: rod tubes, dry storage, and hard cases for the handful of things that must not get wet under any circumstances. We sell the cases, so we will be honest about where a case is the right answer and where a good habit does the job for free. ⚖️
If you fish from a kayak or a paddleboard, our kayak packing list and SUP gear guide cover the boat side; this article is about the tackle.
🧂 Part 1: The things that rust
1. Reels – the most expensive victim of salt and sand 🎡
A reel is a precision mechanism of bearings, gears, springs and a drag stack, and every one of those parts hates what fishing exposes it to. Salt spray dries into crystals that grind in the bearings. Sand carried on wet line goes through the line roller into the rotor. Fresh water left inside the body corrodes steel parts from the inside, quietly, until the drag starts to stick or the handle develops a click. A good reel used in the sea and put away wet can be ruined in a single season; the same reel rinsed and dried after every trip lasts decades.
The routine that works: after every saltwater session, rinse the reel with a gentle spray of fresh water (never a jet – it drives salt inside), with the drag done up tight so water cannot get into the drag stack. Let it dry fully with the drag backed off. Every few trips, a drop of oil on the line roller, handle knob and bail spring; once a season, a service or a full strip and grease if you know how.
Then there is transport and storage, which is where most reel damage actually happens. A reel thrown loose in a bag gets its bail bent, its handle knocked and its spool lip dented – and a dented spool lip cuts line on every cast. Reel pouches help; a small hard case with a foam or divider interior is the step up for expensive reels, especially fly reels and big-game reels that travel by air. Keep the reel dry before it goes in: a wet reel sealed in a case is a reel in a humidity chamber. 💧
2. Hooks, lures and terminal tackle – the tackle-box swamp 🪝
Open an average tackle box after a wet season and you find it: rust on hook points, spinner blades gone dull, split rings seized, a brown tide mark inside every compartment. The cause is not a leak. It is a used lure, still wet, put back into a closed box, where the moisture has nowhere to go and every steel part in the compartment shares it. One rusty hook is a lost fish; a rusty box is a lost season of tackle.
Three habits stop it. First, a "wet box": lures that have been in the water go into a separate open container or a mesh pocket until they are dry, then back into the main box. Second, ventilation and desiccant: a silica-gel sachet in every tackle tray, replaced or dried out monthly, and a box that is opened and aired after each trip. Third, separation: sea lures in their own box, never mixed with freshwater tackle, because salt migrates.
For fly anglers the same applies to flies, with an extra risk: a wet fly in a closed fly box rusts its hook and rots its hackle. Dry the used flies on a patch or in a drying box before they go home. For anglers who travel with valuable terminal tackle – a season's worth of lures, a competition fly collection – a watertight case with a pressure valve keeps the box dry through rain, spray and baggage handling, and the valve stops the lid from locking shut after a flight. The trick is to make sure everything inside is dry first.
3. Pliers, knives, scissors and the small tools 🔧
Pliers rust shut. Line clippers go blunt and orange. Filleting knives pit at the edge. Forceps seize at the hinge. The small tools are cheap to buy and expensive to be without when a hook is in a fish – or in a hand. They are also the items most often left in a wet pocket, a wet bucket or a wet bag for a week.
The fixes are simple: stainless or coated tools where the budget allows, a rinse and a wipe after use, a drop of oil on hinges, and a dedicated dry place to live. A lanyard or a retractor stops them going overboard, which is where a surprising number of pliers end up. On boats and kayaks, a small sealed case for tools, hooks and licence keeps them together and dry between fish.
💥 Part 2: The things that snap
4. Rods – the tip that breaks in the car, not on the fish 🎣
Ask a rod repairer where broken rods come from and the answer is rarely a fish. It is the car door, the tailgate, the ceiling fan in the holiday rental, the tip section stepped on in the boat, the guide crushed in a soft bag under a suitcase, and the airline baggage belt. Modern carbon blanks are astonishingly strong under the bending load they are designed for and astonishingly fragile against a sharp knock or a crush – a tap on a tip section can start a crack that fails weeks later on a good fish.
Protection is straightforward: a rod tube. For travel rods that break down into short sections, a hard tube or a case sized to the sections; for two-piece rods, a full-length tube. The tube should be rigid, closed at both ends, and the rod inside should not rattle – a cloth bag or foam ends keep the sections from hammering each other. For flying, a rigid case that the airline cannot bend is the difference between arriving with a rod and arriving with a repair.
Long, wheeled hard cases originally designed for rifles do this job extremely well, and many fly anglers have discovered it: a case such as the Peli Air 1705 takes several two- or four-piece rods in their tubes, reels and a fly box, locks, floats and survives baggage handling that would destroy a fabric rod bag. The trade-off is size – it is not a bank-side case – but for a destination trip it is the safest way a rod travels.
5. Line – the part that fails invisibly 🧵
Monofilament and fluorocarbon degrade with UV light, heat and time; braid abrades on rocks and frays on guides; fly lines crack when stored kinked or dirty. None of it looks broken until it breaks. A line left on a reel in a hot car, in the sun on a boat or in a shed through the summer loses strength you cannot see.
Store spare spools in the dark, cool and dry. Keep reels out of direct sun when not in use – a case does this by default. Check the last metre of line by feel before each session and cut it back if it is rough. Replace mono every season, sooner in the sea. Clean fly lines with the manufacturer's cleaner and store them in loose coils, not wound tight on a reel for months. Line is cheap; the fish it loses are not.
6. Electronics – fish finders, batteries and the things with screens 📟
A modern angler's kit has more electronics than a 1990s tackle shop: a fish finder or castable sonar, its battery, a GPS or a phone with maps, a headlamp, a bite alarm receiver, a power bank, sometimes a drone for bait dropping or a camera for the catch. Every one of them is vulnerable in two ways: to water, obviously, and to impact – a fish finder head unit dropped onto a slipway, a sonar ball trodden on in the boat, a battery with a cracked case.
The water part is well understood; most fishing electronics are rated for splash, some for immersion. What is less understood is the transport. Lithium batteries for fish finders and bait boats are heavy and have hard corners; loose in a bag, they damage what they touch and get damaged themselves. A cracked lithium battery is a fire risk, not just a dead battery. Give batteries and head units their own compartment – a small hard case with foam or dividers – and keep the charger with them. For flights, lithium batteries usually have to travel in the cabin, not in checked luggage; check the airline's rules before packing.
Two details that save equipment: dry the electronics before they go into a sealed case, and open the case at home to air it. A sealed case is only as dry as what you put in it.
💧 On-the-water cases: for phones, keys, licence and small tackle
🌊 Part 3: The things that sink
7. The phone – the most common loss on any water 📱
Every angler knows someone who has put a phone in a lake, and most know it from experience. Phones fall out of chest pockets when you bend to net a fish, slide off kayak decks, get knocked off boat gunwales and are dropped from jetties. A modern phone survives a dunking; it does not survive twelve metres of water. And it usually goes in while it is doing something useful – showing the sonar app, the map, the tide table or the photo of the fish.
The rule: on the water, the phone lives in a sealed case that floats, on a lanyard, and comes out only when both hands are free. Micro cases such as the Peli 1010, 1020 and 1030 are sized for phones and have a lanyard eye and a lid that seals; the transparent versions let you see notifications through the lid. A phone in a case on a lanyard is a phone you will still have at the end of the day, even after it has been in the water.
8. Keys, licence, wallet and the boat's papers 🔑
Car keys at the bottom of a reservoir are a classic – and with modern keys, an expensive one. So are the fishing licence that dissolves in a wet pocket, the wallet that goes overboard, the boat registration that gets soaked in the bilge. These are the small, flat, critical things that decide whether the day ends at home or at a locksmith's.
They belong together, in one small sealed container, which stays in one place: a pocket in a life vest, a hatch in the kayak, a fixed spot in the boat. A micro case with a lanyard is the standard answer; the lanyard goes through the belt loop or the vest. Keep a photo of the licence on the phone as well, but do not rely on it – the phone may be at the bottom of the same reservoir.
9. Cameras, action cameras and the fish you cannot prove 📷
The catch photo is half the point for many anglers, and cameras are among the most-lost items on the water. Action cameras on mounts are strong but their mounts are not; the clip that failed on a kayak has cost more than one camera. Compact cameras and mirrorless bodies are not waterproof at all and are usually kept "safe" in a bag that is neither dry nor padded.
Action cameras: a tether on every mount, a floating handle when handheld, and the spare batteries and cards in a small sealed case. Real cameras: in a padded, sealed case whenever they are not in your hands – a Peli 1300, 1400 or 1450 with foam or dividers is the classic angler's camera case for exactly this reason: it seals, it floats with a normal load, and it does not care about being stood on in the boat. We wrote about protecting action cameras in more detail in our action camera guide.
10. The tackle bag itself – and everything that goes down with it 🎒
The final way to lose fishing gear is the simplest: the whole bag goes in. A tackle bag knocked off a jetty, a bucket tipped over the side, a kayak capsize with the crate unsecured. Fabric bags sink, or float long enough to be swept away, and their contents – reels, boxes, tools, phone, the lot – go together.
Two principles reduce the damage. First, tie things down: on a kayak or boat, every bag, crate and box is leashed to the craft. Second, choose containers that float and seal for the things that matter. A hard case with its gasket closed floats with a typical load of tackle, keeps the contents dry while it does, and is easy to spot and recover. This is where a case like the Peli 1400 or 1500 becomes the "boat box": reels, lures, tools, phone and keys inside, latched and clipped to the deck, opened only when a hand is free.
A word on what a case is not: it is not a substitute for drying and rinsing. A sealed box full of wet, salty tackle is a corrosion experiment. The case keeps water out; the angler keeps the water from going in with the gear.
🎣 Tackle, reel and rod cases: the boat box and the travel tube
🛶 Bank, boat, kayak, plane: how the risks change
Bank and shore fishing. The main enemies are rain, mud and the walk: gear gets dropped, sat on and left in the wet. A rod tube for the walk, a dry box for the phone and licence, and the "wet box" habit for used lures cover most of it. A big hard case is overkill here; a small one for the valuables is not.
Boat fishing. Everything is wet all the time, everything gets stepped on, and everything not tied down eventually goes over the side. Salt is constant on the sea. A sealed boat box that floats and is clipped to the boat, lanyards on tools and phone, and a rinse-and-dry routine for reels the same evening are the three habits that matter.
Kayak and SUP fishing. Capsize is not a possibility, it is a schedule. Assume everything will be underwater at some point: sealed cases for electronics, phone and keys, leashes on rods and crate, and nothing loose on deck. Micro cases with lanyards are the kayak angler's basic kit; a mid-size case in the crate for reels and tackle is the next step.
Flying to fish. The rod is the item at risk – it must travel in a rigid tube or case. Reels and expensive lures travel best in a hard case in checked luggage, locked; lithium batteries for sonar and cameras travel in the cabin. Pack tackle dry, add desiccant, and expect the case to be opened by security – a tidy inventory in the lid helps. A wheeled long case that takes rods, reels and a tackle box in one piece is the travelling fly angler's standard answer.
✅ The end-of-trip checklist
- ☐ Reels rinsed (drag tight), then dried with the drag loose; oil on roller, knob and bail.
- ☐ Used lures and flies in the wet box until dry, then back into the main box.
- ☐ Tackle boxes opened and aired; silica gel checked.
- ☐ Tools rinsed, wiped, oiled at the hinge.
- ☐ Rods wiped down, checked for tip and guide damage, back in their tubes.
- ☐ Last metre of line checked and cut back if rough.
- ☐ Electronics dried, batteries charged and stored in their case.
- ☐ Cases opened at home to air, even if they were closed on the water.
- ☐ Phone, keys and licence back in the small case, lanyard attached, ready for next time.
❓ Common questions
Does a hard case float?
A closed, gasketed hard case floats with a normal load of tackle; whether it floats with a heavy load of lead weights and batteries depends on the case size and what is inside. For anything you must not lose on the water, the safe assumption is: leash it as well.
Will a sealed case stop my tackle rusting?
Only if the tackle goes in dry. A sealed case keeps outside water out; it also keeps inside moisture in. Dry the gear, add a silica-gel sachet, and open the case at home to air it. Our article on what IP67 actually means explains the sealing side.
Which case fits fly rods for a flight?
Long cases originally made for rifles are the usual answer because they are rigid, lockable and wheeled. The Peli Air 1705 takes several rods in their tubes plus reels and a fly box; check your rod tube lengths against the internal length before you buy, since four-piece rods fit almost anything and two-piece rods need the longest cases.
What about my tackle box – do I need to replace it with a hard case?
Usually no. A standard tackle box with trays is the right tool for organising lures; a hard case is the right tool for keeping the box, the reels and the electronics dry and floating. Many anglers put the tackle trays inside a hard case for boat and kayak use.
Can I use the same cases for kayaking and diving?
Yes – the micro and small cases in this article are the same ones we recommend for kayaks, SUPs and dive trips. See our dive trip packing guide for that side.
🏁 The bottom line
Fishing gear fails in three ways – rust, snap, sink – and each has a known cure. Rinse and dry reels and tools; keep wet tackle away from dry tackle; put rods in tubes; keep line out of the sun; give electronics and batteries their own padded, sealed space; and put the phone, keys and licence in a small sealed case on a lanyard before the boat leaves the shore. The habits are free. The cases cost money once and then quietly stop the losses that every angler used to think were part of the sport. 🎣
Micro cases for phones and keys, small and mid-size cases for reels and tackle, and long cases for rods are all in our Water Adventures range – and if you are not sure which size takes your reels or your rod tubes, send us the dimensions and we will match a case before you order.
