17 hours ago, Texas Flood said:

Woooooooow. I have enough stock to get me through this season but this is going to seriously force me to reconsider how I fish and what I use going into next year. What a shame. This was all completely avoidable too.

A real shame for conservation too. I'd assume all of us on here are fairly serious about this hobby and try to follow the letter of the law as closely as we can, but the casual angler is 100% going straight back to lead with prices like these despite any local lead laws. A lot of the Loon populations by me have made a real comeback with the implementation of those laws.

On 4/7/2026 at 1:02 PM, Tackleholic said:

While we are on the subject, I'm going to ask another question. Are there different qualities of tungsten, and is it possible for a product which is labeled as tungsten to be only part tungsten? My suspicious mind has wondered about this before?

This is probably an important thing to bring up now. Especially since people are probably going to be scrambling to stock up on "deals" from some of the overseas bulk distributors.

There are two "types" of tungsten weights. One is a polymer with tungsten fill, with a density of around 10g/cm^3, closer to lead. This is the "cheap route" some brands go while still being able to advertise their product as tungsten. Then there is sintered tungsten which is a tungsten powder that is sintered together, with a density of about 18g/cm^3. This is the tungsten that gives you those truly special properties we seek out, and also the one that is about to become completely uneconomical to manufacture for fishing products. So if you see a "deal" that's too good to be true, it probably is. At that point you might as well be buying lead.

3 hours ago, MassYak85 said:

Woooooooow. I have enough stock to get me through this season but this is going to seriously force me to reconsider how I fish and what I use going into next year. What a shame. This was all completely avoidable too.

A real shame for conservation too. I'd assume all of us on here are fairly serious about this hobby and try to follow the letter of the law as closely as we can, but the casual angler is 100% going straight back to lead with prices like these despite any local lead laws. A lot of the Loon populations by me have made a real comeback with the implementation of those laws.

It's pretty insane with these prices. I also stocked up before the price hike but will also have to do some thinking when they run out.

I've already gone back to lead jigs like Greenfish and Dirty because I cant justify the price of Beast Coast ones at the moment. Hopefully the pricing will go down someday.

Maybe we should all switch to gold. It's slightly heavier and it's cheaper. 😆

Another reason I went to straight braid whenever I can get away with it. I can't afford to be leaving $5 weights and $2 hooks in the water. My friend thought I was crazy for buying Gamakatsu. I told him my hooks are years old. I haven't depleted the three 5-packs of superline EWGs I bought in different sizes years ago. Gamakatsus stay sharp and hold a good occasional sharpening.