Mystery Tackle Box

Mystery Tackle Box sends 4 to 10 fishing baits and terminal tackle each month, selected for the species you choose at signup: bass, panfish and trout, inshore saltwater, walleye, ice fishing, or multi-species. Three tiers scale the contents from four baits up to ten. Founded in Chicago in 2012 and now the largest fishing subscription in the United States, having shipped more than 10 million boxes. Parent company Catch Co. changed hands through an insolvency process in March 2024 and has continued shipping since.

What’s Included

Mystery Tackle Box is the largest fishing subscription in the United States, and its core idea is better than most subscription boxes manage. Rather than sending a generic assortment, it matches contents to the species you told it you fish for.

Each box contains soft plastics, hard baits, jigs, hooks, and terminal tackle appropriate to your chosen target. Six species options are available: bass, panfish and trout, inshore saltwater, walleye, ice fishing, and multi-species. The count scales with your tier, from four baits at the entry level up to ten.

The company also produces a large volume of instructional fishing content, so for a newer angler the subscription doubles as a way to learn techniques rather than just acquire tackle.

Pricing Plans

Tier	Monthly	Baits	Claimed value	Delivered cost
Regular	$19.99	4 to 6	$25	$24.98
Pro	$31.99	6 to 8	$40	$36.98
Elite	$44.99	8 to 10	$60	$49.98

Shipping is $4.99 on every monthly plan, which is why the delivered cost matters more than the headline price.

Multi-month prepaid plans remove the shipping fee and add bonus items. A 12-month Elite plan is $529.99 rather than $599.76 paid month by month, a saving of roughly $70 across the year. Four-month and six-month Elite plans run $188.99 and $274.99.

How It Works

You choose a species and a tier at signup, and boxes ship monthly from there. The species selection is not locked: you can change it whenever the season shifts or you start fishing different water, which is the feature that keeps the subscription useful over time rather than for a few months.

The company states that you can pause, cancel, or change species at any time from your account. We were not able to verify the granular skip mechanics, because the relevant help page did not render its answers when we checked, so treat the pause and cancel claims as the company’s own statement rather than something we confirmed independently.

Shipping is United States only. There is no international option.

The Value Question, Answered Honestly

Look at the delivered-cost column above, because it is the thing most reviews of this box leave out.

At the Regular tier you pay $24.98 for tackle the company values at $25. That is not a discount. What you are buying at that tier is curation and discovery, not savings, and those are different products worth being clear about.

The economics improve as you go up. Elite delivers a claimed $60 of tackle for $49.98, and prepaying removes the shipping fee entirely. If your reason for subscribing is to spend less on tackle overall, the Regular tier is the wrong choice and the annual Elite plan is the right one.

There is also the usual caveat about claimed retail value. It is the company’s own valuation of its own contents, at full retail, on items that are frequently discounted elsewhere. Treat it as an indication of quantity rather than a price comparison.

Who It’s For

Mystery Tackle Box suits anglers who fish regularly for one or two identifiable species and want to widen the range of baits they use. The species matching is what makes it work: a box of bass tackle for someone who fishes bass is genuinely usable, in a way that a general outdoor gear box rarely is.

It suits new anglers particularly well. Building a tackle box from scratch is expensive and involves a lot of guessing, and a few months of curated baits plus the company’s instructional content is a reasonable shortcut to a working kit.

It is a weaker fit for experienced anglers with settled preferences, who will find a proportion of each box redundant, and for anyone fishing water where local knowledge matters far more than variety. It is also a poor fit if you want to save money at the entry tier, for the reasons above.

What We Would Flag Before You Subscribe

The ownership change is real and recent. In March 2024 parent company Catch Co. was transferred to Gordon Brothers through an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors. That is an insolvency mechanism, not an ordinary acquisition. Founder Ross Gordon left as chief executive at the same time, and reporting cited shifts in consumer behaviour, the impact of ad-tracking changes on customer acquisition, and financial constraints.

We are not telling you the company is about to fail. It has been shipping for two and a half years since, its plans are live, and its review profile shows continuing activity. We are telling you because a review site that omits a distress event of that size is not being straight with you, and because it is worth knowing before you prepay for twelve months.

There is no BBB letter grade. BBB lists the parent company but states it has insufficient information to issue a rating, with no complaints closed in three years. That is not a bad sign in itself, but it does mean one of the two independent checks we normally run is unavailable, and the Trustpilot score of 3.8 is carrying more weight than usual as a result.

How It Compares

Against Nomadik and other general outdoor boxes, this is a specialist, and the specialism is its main advantage. A box of bass baits has a clear use. A box of assorted outdoor gadgets often does not.

Against Lucky Tackle Box, its closest direct competitor, Mystery Tackle Box is the stronger choice by a wide margin. Both sell species-matched tackle at a similar monthly price, and Lucky Tackle Box even ships free where this charges $4.99. Their customer records are not comparable. Lucky Tackle Box carries a far lower Trustpilot score on a smaller sample, plus a BBB grade in the range that caps a box at 3.5, driven by unanswered complaints about cancellation. The trust figures for both are shown on each box page.

Against Postfly, the split is sport rather than quality. Postfly sends flies for fly fishing at $34.95 with free shipping, matched to trout, saltwater or warmwater. If you fly fish, this box is not a substitute for it, and neither is a substitute for the other.

If you want a conventional tackle subscription, this is the one to start with.