The starting kit

The Research · September 2026

Nothing in this list was provided by a manufacturer. It's gear bought outright and fished already. Where that changes in later posts, it will say so.
Before launch — fill in and delete this box
Replace the placeholder rows in the table with your actual gear and real weights from a kitchen scale. Keep the structure: item, weight, and the one-line argument for why it's carried. The weights are the whole point — they're what nobody else publishes, and they're what makes this page worth linking to.

This is the bag that gets on the plane to Baja on 1 November. It is not a recommendation, and it is deliberately not called a best-of. It's a starting position — the baseline every later revision gets measured against, published in full so the changes mean something.

The rule for everything in here is the same: it has to justify its weight after six miles of soft sand. Anything that can't is a candidate for getting cut, and several things on this list probably will be.

The whole bag

ItemWeightWhy it's carried
Pack— g
Rod— g
Reel— g
Terminal tackle— g
Lures— g
Leader— g
Pliers / cutters— g
Sun protection— g
Water— g
Total— g

What I expect to get wrong

Writing this down before the trip is the useful part, because it's checkable afterwards. The honest guesses: the lure selection is too broad, the water is too little for a full day on open sand, and at least one item in here gets carried for two weeks without being used once.

What happens to this list

It gets revised after every leg, with the reasoning published each time. Baja first, then Fiji, Thailand and the Maldives. The version that survives all four is the one worth having, and it won't look much like this one.

How gear gets judged →