AllOutdoor Review – Lakewood Swimbait Deposit Box
Eugene L. 05.06.24
At ICAST last year Lakewood Products released their newest fishing storage solution the new Swimbait Deposit Box. This is a new hard tackle box design from them to be the solution for storing large and often expensive swimbaits. The conventional tackleboxes and tackle storage trays have the problem of not playing nice with big swimbaits often. Either the lures just don’t fit in them or they damage or deform the baits over time. Anyone who fishes big Keitechs is probably familiar with bent paddle tails and warpage from being stored not just right in a standard tackle box. The Swimbait Deposit Box stores your big baits vertically to help protect your expensive swimbaits in top condition. So to see how effective of a swimbait tackle box the Deposit Box is I have used it for most of a year now for both big bass swimbaits and big saltwater plugs. So let’s get into it and see how it’s worked and held up for the past year.
Fishing Coverage on AllOutdoor
- AllOutdoor Review – Lakewood Mini Sidekick Tackle Box
- AllOutdoor Review: Lakewood Billfold – Storage Solution for Baits
- Quick Fishing Trip to Channel 2 Bridge in Islamorada
- Feeding Tarpon at Robbie’s of Islamorada – Village in Florida
- AllOutdoor Review – St. Croix Trout Series Spinning Rod 7ft Light
- A Day in South Korea – Crucian Carp Fishing Park
Lakewood Swimbait Deposit Box Key Features
Like I said before the Swimbait Deposit Box is a vertical tackle storage solution made specifically for big swimbait storage. It comes with 4 ABS plastic compartments that are 14″ deep that each have a crossbar with two clips to hand whatever 14″ or short swimbait you have. The ABS separators also have slots cut into them so you can hand more baits if needed and you can also order more clips if you want to hand more baits as well. Like all Lakewood products, they are made of high-quality material and made proudly in the USA.
- Keep those expensive swimbaits protected while in your boat, kayak, or shore!
- Perfect for the larger swimbaits and glide baits and will also accommodate the flutter spoons
- Handle on top for ease of getting in and out of the storage compartments and also perfect for attaching to backpack or kayak
- Mesh on the bottom to allow for air flow and drainage
- Separate compartments to hang baits with individual rods and clips.
- Comes with 2 clips per compartment. (4 Compartments with 8 total clips, and more clips can be purchased here under options if needed.)
- Heavy duty ABS wrapped with foam lined polyester material.
- Outside Case Dimensions: 9” L x 6.5” W x 14” H (4 compartments)
- Comes with Lakewood Products lifetime warranty against defects in materials and craftsmanship.
- One Color – Black
- Weight: 7lbs
- MSRP – $134.99
These swimbait tackle boxes have a mesh bottom, which lets water drain and air flow in to keep your lures from rusting. They are only available in Black as of now and come with Lakewood’s lifetime warranty against defects in materials and craftsmanship, so if you find something wrong with your tackle box Lakewood has your back.
Out on the Water – Lakewood Swimbait Deposit Box
The first thing I did once I got the box and some of the spare clips was just load up the Swimbait Deposit Box with a bunch of my saltwater lures, a bunch of bigger soft plastic pre-rigged swimbaits for tarpon, and hard baits for king mackerel. While these aren’t my biggest lures but definitely longer than the average plug. This was more of a stress test of seeing how many lures could comfortably fit inside the Swimbait Deposit Box and as you can see below you can fit in a lot of lures if you need to. It did make a good and easy access platform to swap between lures pretty quick when swapping lures when chasing the schools of migrating tarpon as they rush past the pier. It also excelled offshore for storing tuna poppers and stick baits with a reduced amount of hangers in the tackle box. The removable hangers made pulling out those big plugs with big trebles a breeze even in a rocking boat offshore.
Now for use in a more freshwater setting, once I finished up fishing down in Florida for the year I switched the tackle box over to big swimbaits for hunting big largemouth bass in the colder months. This is where the Swimbait Deposit Box excelled. For both soft and hard plastic swimbaits it was a great storage solution in different ways. Jumbo-sized glide baits, wake baits, and jointed swimmers aren’t cheap, usually starting off around $30 at the low end and going well in the hundreds of dollars at the high end. So having the hangers and plenty of space around each lure made it so the only damage my lures took was from either the fish or me bouncing them off a rock like a dumbass.
With soft baits, I think that’s where the Swimbait Deposit Box really shines. These aren’t as high a dollar lure for the most part as the hard baits but they still aren’t cheap either. A lot of them don’t swim right if their paddle tails get bent due to improper storage so most come in clamshell packaging that helps hold their shape. But that packaging only works if the lures aren’t rigged up. So with the hanger system in the Swimbait Deposit Box, you can leave your big soft plastics pre-rigged and just hang them up by the hook eye. It makes it super convenient compared to either having a flat pack of baits you rigged up or having to remove the hook from the soft plastic each time. The latter of which will cause you to tear up your lures faster.
Final Thoughts – Lakewood Swimbait Deposit Box
Overall I think the Swimbait Deposit Box is a great tackle box, the build quality is right where you would expect it to be for a Lakewood Product. It’s compact and light so easy to just keep in the car and walk around the lake with when you want to throw just big lures. It does a great job of keeping all my big swimbaits in good condition and easily accessible while on the water. The only thing I could see anyone really complain about is the price. The MSRP of the Swimbait Deposit Box sits at $134.99, which for a lot of anglers is a big pill to swallow. But if you think about it this is a specialized tacklebox for a specialized section of anglers. Where for some even two or three of their big swimbaits can easily be a car payment for others. If you are a big swimbait addict to that degree I recommend this tacklebox to you, that way all your handpainted glide baits and wake baits will stay in the best condition possible till they run across that double-digit beast one day or just a log.
