The Secret Tackle Store

ESTES PARK, Colorado— I’ve done some traveling this year, some traveling in search of tackle stores. To date, I’ve crossed over 5,000 miles of prime, U.S.-grade asphalt, and I’ve found a few oddities along the way. Chief among them is the “secret” tackle store.

The secret tackle store is a place no one knows about—except for the locals, that is. It’s a place where astonishing deals can be found for those “in the know.” Believe it or not, there are at least half a dozen of these scattered around the country. There’s just one problem: the secret tackle store doesn’t exist.

The secret tackle store cannot exist. This is because secrets do not exist in 2016.

Thanks to the internet, thanks to search engine algorithms and the interconnectivity of everything from phone book listings to Apple and Google Maps, Yelp! and TripAdvisor, the days of a “secret” tackle store holed up in an obscure corner of an industrial park or the farthest reaches of a dusty county road are gone.

If you are a business that customers can walk into, chances are that someone has left a review of your place somewhere, and if they have Google will find you. Yet, I’ve found that the owners of these stores still think they’re a secret. “We don’t want the word to get out,” some have said.

But the word is already out.

While it’s true that FTR has a geo-mapped database of tackle retailers around the country, it’s also true that—for the most part—when I’m in a new area, I simply Google tackle stores to find what’s out there. And every single time, that’s how I’ve found the latest “secret” tackle store.

In the interest of playing along, I’m not going to reveal the highly sensitive location of these clandestine tackle havens along America’s highways and byways. But I will say this:

When you drive for 5,000 miles in search of fishing tackle, you see a lot of places. And you see something sobering in almost every town—you see closed tackle stores. You see dead tackle stores. Those are the ones that don’t show up in search results. They are the real “secret” stores.

The real secret stores exist in Wisconsin and Florida, in Missouri and Montana, in South Dakota and Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and Colorado. The real secret stores are scary, because most of them really won’t open again.

In a land filled with boarded up windows, there’s no need to hide your front door. Trust me, you don’t want to be the secret tackle store.