Tips on Buying Fishing Lures Online
Kevin Felts 11.28.19
Some of the readers may be asking themselves, “What is so difficult about buying lures online?” There is nothing that difficult about it, until it comes to getting exactly what you want. There have been times when I ordered lures online and they were either too large, too small, or not what I was looking for.
Before shopping online, I will typically start at a brick and mortar store, pick up a few lures then go try them out. This is where people typically make their first mistake: they throw the lure box away. Then they go fishing, catch some fish, lose the lure, then want to buy it again. Without the original packaging — or even a photo of it — you have no reference as to the manufacturer, name, and either model or item number.
If you’ve gone to eBay or Amazon and typed “fishing lure” into the search box you should know the number of results is overwhelming. A search of amazon for fishing lure brings back 20,000 results, while eBay returns 258,294 results. Finding a certain lure out of 20,000 or 258,000 results is like finding a needle in a haystack. If we have the lure name (such as “tiny torpedo”) we can narrow those results down. If we have the item or part number we can narrow it down even more.
For example, let’s take the Tiny Torpedo lure. If we do a search on eBay for tiny torpedo fishing lure, we get back 446 results rather than 258,000. If we do the same search on amazon we get 206 results, which is a lot more manageable than 20,000 results. So if you find a new lure you like, take a picture of the front and back of the lure, making sure the name and part / model number is visible.
Next tip is to use a tape measure to measure the length of the lure. This is helpful when shopping for artificial worms or crappie tubes. A couple of years ago I thought a crappie tube in my collection was a certain size, so I ordered that size off eBay. Come to find out I was around 1/4 inch off. Rather than the 1/2 inch tubes I wanted, I had ordered 100 3/4 inch tubes. It was not that big of a mistake and I still have several dozen of those 3/4 inch tubes in my crappie tackle box.
Third and last is color. Take time to familiarize yourself with the various colors, such as chartreuse.
