I miss the days when i was a kid with five or six dollars in my hand standing in a "real tackle shop" for three hours straight figuring out what i wanted to buy. I also miss all the packages having the little red, white and blue flags proudly proclaiming "Made In The USA" on them.

WallyMart has done nothing but promise big bucks to tackle manufacturers while at the same time coercing them to have as much of their product as possible outsourced to cheap labor in third world countries.

I use to buy a certain tube bait made by one of the big name companies and was well pleased with it. I remember one season i ordered twenty five packs of six different colors and when i got them i noticed with some bags the tubes were a bit shorter than others and over half of them of them had knots on the heads. They also appeared to have been made from a cheaper grade plastic. I checked the bags of the old nicer made tubes and they had "Made In The USA" on the front of the bags. The new bags had "Made in Guatemala" in very small letters on the back of the bags. A couple weeks later i was in WallyMart and noticed the shelves were full of various baits from this particular company.