PLUSINNO Tackle Kit vs Catch Co Mystery Tackle Box: Which Is Worth It?

If you need a working bass setup right now, the PLUSINNO kit is the better buy, and it isn't close. You get 137 pieces in one organized hard case: crankbaits, spoons, hooks, weights, swivels, and floats. It shows up at your door and you can fish the same afternoon. The Catch Co Mystery Tackle Box is a different animal entirely. It is a monthly subscription that sends a curated handful of baits, heavy on brand-name soft plastics, and the appeal is not knowing what's inside until the box lands. That is a real appeal, and I will give it its due below. But if you are starting from an empty box, or you fish from the bank like I do and lose lures to snags, you want the kit.

The short version is this. One is a complete starter setup, and the other is a discovery service. I spent the last three months fishing both. The PLUSINNO kit has been in my 14-foot aluminum jon boat on every trip since early April, and I let three Mystery Tackle Boxes stack up on the workbench before going through them in one sitting. Both approaches have a place in a tackle room. But if you are the kind of angler who wants to open one box and be done, or you are buying a first setup for someone who is just getting into bass fishing, the answer is the PLUSINNO kit. Read on and I will show you exactly where each one earns its keep, and where each one comes up short.

What You're Actually Getting With Each One

The PLUSINNO kit is built around the box itself. It is a hard plastic case with adjustable dividers, the kind you can toss into a boat compartment or onto a tailgate without worrying about it. Inside, the 137 pieces break down into crankbaits in a few sizes, a handful of spoons, a solid pile of offset hooks, worm weights, swivels, snaps, and a couple of floats. I counted when I first opened mine, because 137 sounds like a round number that marketing made up. It is actually all there. The crankbaits cover the sizes I reach for most on my lake, and the spoons have accounted for more crappie than I expected on early spring evenings. On the third Saturday in May I took the kit to the lake and caught nine crappie off one point using the same spoon, then switched to a crankbait and picked up two bass before the wind turned it. That is the kind of afternoon a kit like this is built for. Everything I needed was in the case, and nothing in it felt like filler. What it does not include is line, which is fair enough, since nobody can know what you already spool up. I added a hook sharpener and a small pack of plastic worms, and that was it. The box has held up all season, dividers included, and the latches have never popped open on the floorboard of my truck.

Catch Co's Mystery Tackle Box works the opposite way. Every month, a box shows up with baits chosen by people who clearly pay attention to seasons and regions. Mine had a mix of soft plastics, a couple of hard baits, and the occasional pack of hooks or weights riding along. The standouts have been the soft plastics, real brand-name stuff I would not have picked off the shelf on my own. One May box had a craw pattern that matched what the bass were keying on that week, and I caught fish on it three weekends in a row when my usual go-to was getting ignored. That is the core value of the subscription: someone else does the thinking, and you get pushed out of the rut you did not even know you were in. I went through the three boxes on a Sunday afternoon in July, sorting lures into my own case and writing notes on each pack. The finesse worms from one box have since outfished my usual worm on a slow evening, and that alone justified the three months I tried it. The trade-off is pace. A kit gives you everything on day one. A subscription builds your box a handful of baits at a time, and only if you remember to fish each box while the season still matches it.

	PLUSINNO Tackle Kit	Catch Co Mystery Tackle Box
Cost to get started	One-time purchase. Pay once, own all 137 pieces.	Monthly subscription, charge repeats every month.
What's inside	Crankbaits, spoons, hooks, weights, swivels, floats. Everything needed to fish today.	Curated mix each month, heavy on brand-name soft plastics.
Terminal tackle	Hooks, sinkers, swivels and snaps included in the kit.	Occasional extras, but the draw is the lures.
Variety over time	Fixed selection. What you see is what you get.	New baits every month, seasonal colors, brands you would not try otherwise.
Commitment	None. Buy once and it is yours.	Easy to pause or cancel, but it is a recurring decision.
Best fit	Beginners, bank anglers, anyone who needs a working setup now.	Anglers with the basics covered who want to expand.
Organization	Hard case with dividers. Self-contained, easy to grab and go.	Boxes stack, but you will manage the collection yourself.

Where PLUSINNO Wins

For a working setup, PLUSINNO wins on value, and it is not close. A single decent crankbait costs what it costs these days, and this kit has a pile of them, plus hooks, weights, swivels and everything else, all in one case. Last winter, before I bought the kit, I priced out a comparable handful of name-brand crankbaits, hooks, and weights on my phone and stopped adding to the cart when the total passed what the whole kit runs. The math only works in one direction, and that is before you factor in the case. I have had mine since the first weekend of April and it has been on every trip since. The Saturday before Memorial Day, I hung a crankbait on a submerged log and felt the line go dead. I opened the case, picked a similar size, retied, and was casting again inside two minutes. That is the whole argument for a kit like this. It is not about having the perfect bait for every situation. It is about having something that works, ready to go, when the moment calls for it.

The case itself matters more than I expected it to. I fish from a 14-foot aluminum jon boat and from the bank, which means my tackle gets bounced around in a truck bed or a boat compartment every trip. A flimsy box would have shed dividers by now. This one has held up through a full season, the latches stay shut, the dividers stay put, and the pieces stay sorted. I also like that it is self-contained. I can grab the case, one rod, and a spool of line, and that is a complete trip. No separate bag of terminal tackle, no loose hooks in the bottom of a tote. Scout, my retriever, rides in the cab with me on the way to the lake, and the case sits on the floorboard without shedding hooks where he steps. That is a small thing until you have stepped on a loose hook in bare feet, and then it is a big thing.

Where Catch Co Mystery Tackle Box Wins

Now the honest part. The Mystery Tackle Box wins on discovery, and that is not a small thing. When you buy a kit, you are buying the same baits everyone else gets. When you open a mystery box, you are getting what a real angler picked for your region and the time of year. The soft plastics in mine have been the best part. I am a crankbait and spinnerbait guy by habit, and I would not have bought half of what showed up. But the craw pattern from May caught bass three weekends in a row, and a tiny swimbait I would have walked past turned out to be the best crappie lure I used all spring. If your goal is to get better, being forced to fish something new is worth the subscription cost by itself. It is the difference between fishing what you know and learning what you do not.

There is also the seasonal timing, and that is something a static kit cannot do. Catch Co sends baits that match what is happening on the water, and the people behind the boxes clearly think about that. The same selection in March and July would be useless half the year, and their boxes track the calendar. I let three boxes stack up on the workbench before opening them, which was my mistake, because the May box had already missed its best window by the time I got to it. Lesson learned: if you subscribe, fish the box the week it arrives. The June box had a note card explaining why each bait was chosen, and I kept those cards in my glove box until the paper wore out. That is a small touch, but it turned a box of lures into a lesson. The other thing the subscription does well is introduce you to brands you would never reach for. I found two soft plastic lines that I now buy on my own, which tells me the service did its job. Over a season, that is how a mystery box pays for itself, in confidence as much as in lures.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the PLUSINNO kit if you are new to bass fishing, if you are setting up a kid or a friend, or if you fish from the bank and lose tackle to snags the way I do. It is also the right call if you want one purchase and done, with no calendar reminder to cancel a subscription later. I would hand it to someone as their first real tackle box without a second thought. Buy the Catch Co Mystery Tackle Box if you already have the basics covered and you want to try new baits without doing the research yourself. It works better as a second purchase than a first one. And if you are on a tight schedule, the kit wins again, because a subscription only pays off over months. For a trip this weekend, the PLUSINNO kit is the one I would grab on the way out the door.

My honest bottom line is this. I bought the PLUSINNO kit for myself in early April and I have fished it all season. It is the box that lives in my truck, and it will be the box I reach for opening day next spring. The Mystery Tackle Box is something I enjoyed as an experiment, and I would take three months of it as a gift without complaint, because it made me fish differently and I am better for it. If someone asked me at the boat ramp which one to buy, I would answer the same way I just wrote it, kit first, subscription second, and I would not have to think about it. But if I had to pick one thing to hand someone who wants to catch bass this week, it is the kit. You cannot fish a subscription on Saturday morning. You can fish the PLUSINNO kit. That distinction matters more than any single lure in either box, and it is the reason the kit is what I would recommend to most people, most of the time.