Plano StowAway 4-By Review: A Season of Tackle Without the Mess

I spent most of last season digging. Not for fish, for tackle. My 16-foot aluminum boat has a bench seat with a storage compartment under it, and that compartment was a black hole. Jig heads in one corner, spinnerbaits in another, a spool of line that had come unwound, a pair of pliers I finally found in October. Every trip started the same way: me on my knees, muttering, while Karen sat in the bow pretending not to hear me. Then I bought the Plano Guide Series StowAway 4-By this spring, and the digging stopped.

I ran it for one full open-water season, from ice-out in early May through the first week of October. Walleye trips, bass evenings, a few afternoons when I just wanted to cast a spinnerbait until dark. It rode on the floor of the boat, got rained on, got splashed, got stepped on once when I reached for a net. By the end of the season, the rack had logged more hours than I did. This is how it held up.

How I've Used It

The StowAway 4-By is a rack that holds four 3700 utility boxes, with a top compartment under a clear DuraView lid for the stuff you need without opening a box. I set mine up in April, the week before ice-out. Two of the 3700 boxes hold walleye gear: jig heads in one, spinner rigs and crawler harnesses in the other. The third box is bass stuff, soft plastics in one half and hard baits in the other. The fourth box is the junk drawer, hooks, swivels, split shot, a few bobbers, a little tube of Super Glue. I wrote the contents on a piece of masking tape on the end of each box, which sounds old-fashioned but means I can find the walleye box at a glance.

The top storage is where the system earns its keep. I keep a pair of needle-nose pliers, a hook sharpener, a small spool of 8 lb line, and a headlamp in there. When a fish needs a quick hook swap, I do not open a box. I flip the lid, grab what I need, and get back to fishing. On a slow evening that is the difference between changing a jig in thirty seconds and spending two minutes digging. On a good evening, when the walleyes are hitting every other cast, that extra minute matters a lot more.

Opening weekend in May is when the system proved itself. The walleye opener was cold, high forties with a north wind, and we were working a point on a lake north of Brainerd. The wind kept pushing us off the spot, so we were repositioning every few minutes, and every reposition called for a different jig. Without the rack, that would have meant kneeling in the bottom of the boat, digging through the storage compartment while we drifted, cussing under my breath. With it, I flipped the DuraView lid, grabbed the jig I wanted, and was casting again before Karen had her line back in the water. That was the moment I stopped being skeptical about whether a tackle rack was worth the floor space. By July I had reorganized the boxes twice, and that is the other thing I like about this system. The 3700 boxes come out as a unit, so I can pull the bass box, carry it to the kitchen table, sort the soft plastics, and put the whole box back in the rack. With my old soft bag, reorganizing meant dumping everything onto the garage floor and starting over, which is why I never did it.

I carried it by the handle from the truck to the boat on every trip. It is not mounted to anything. It sits on the floor between the bench seat and the casting deck, and I move it around when I need to get to the live well. The handle is comfortable enough with a full load, and the rack is stable on the floor even when the boat rocks.

What the StowAway 4-By Actually Does

The Plano StowAway 4-By is built around the 3700 utility box, which is the most common tackle box size in America. You probably already own a few. I own about a dozen, and the fact that this rack takes the boxes I already had is the main reason I bought it. I did not have to rebuy my tackle in a new proprietary system. I loaded my existing boxes into the rack and went fishing. The boxes sit level in the rack, and the whole thing rides flat on the boat floor, so nothing tips when you set it down.

The rack holds four boxes in two tiers, two on the bottom and two on top, with the top storage compartment above them. The clear DuraView lid lets you see what is in the top compartment without opening it. That sounds like a small thing, but when you are reaching behind you from the front seat, being able to see the pliers before you grab is genuinely useful. The lid also stays open on its own, which is more than I can say for every lid on my boat.

The fit is what surprised me. My old tackle bag had pockets sized for nothing in particular, so everything slid around and settled into a pile at the bottom, hooks and bobbers and line all mixed together. The StowAway holds the boxes snugly, in a defined footprint, so nothing shifts when you carry it. Try that with a soft bag and you will be picking hooks out of the carpet for a week. The boxes also sit high enough in the rack that the latches are easy to work even when the rack is on the floor, which is not true of every tackle organizer I have owned.

The latches are the part I was most worried about. Cheap tackle boxes have latches that break by August, and once a latch goes, the box spills every time you pick it up. The latches on the StowAway 4-By worked all season. They click shut with a positive feel, they stayed shut when the rack got bounced around in the back of my F-150, and none of them broke. That is not a small thing. That is the whole job.

A Season of Real Conditions

My boat is a 16-foot aluminum rig, and it does not have a lot of dry storage. The StowAway 4-By lives on the floor, which means it gets splashed. I ran it through a season of rain showers, boat wakes, and one incident where a net full of water drained right onto the lid. The top compartment stayed dry in the rain, and the 3700 boxes are water resistant enough for normal splashes. But I want to be clear about something: this thing is not waterproof. It is not even close to waterproof.

I learned that the hard way in June. I left the rack on the boat floor overnight after a day of fishing, and a thunderstorm blew through. The boat sits uncovered on a lift, and the next morning there was an inch of water in the bottom of the boat. The bottom tier of boxes had water in them. Not soaked, but damp, and a few jig heads had surface rust. My fault, not the product's fault. The Plano StowAway 4-By is a tackle organizer, not a dry box. If you leave it in standing water, you will pay for it.

That storm taught me the rule I followed for the rest of the season. Any night with rain in the forecast, the rack comes up to the truck cab. It takes ten seconds, and it keeps the boxes dry. I also stopped keeping the bottom tier loaded with anything that rusts easily. The treble hooks moved up to the top tier, and the bottom tier became soft plastics and line, things that do not care about a little damp. The worst conditions came in late July. We were running the length of the lake ahead of a thunderstorm, three-foot chop, and the rack slid a few inches across the floor before I braced it with my foot. Nothing came out of the boxes and the latches held. The next morning there was a little water in the bottom tray, but the boxes themselves were dry. That is the line with this product: it will take weather and splashes, it will not take standing water.

The other thing I learned is that the rack does not raise your boxes to eye level. It sits on the floor, so you still have to bend over to get into the boxes. On a boat, that is fine. You are already bending over to land fish and retie. But if you were hoping to stand at a workbench and have your tackle at waist height, this is not that product. It is a boat rack and a carry system, not a workstation.

The latches on the StowAway 4-By worked all season. They click shut with a positive feel, they stayed shut when the rack got bounced around in the back of my F-150, and none of them broke.

What I'd Change

If Plano asked me, I would make the handle a little beefier. It is fine for carrying four boxes of tackle, but I found its limit in August. I had loaded the top compartment with a rain jacket, a thermos, and a bottle of water, and carried the whole thing from the truck to the dock, maybe a hundred feet. The handle bowed enough that I switched to two hands for the last stretch. It never broke, and it never looked like it would break, but a product this solid everywhere else deserves a handle you do not have to think about.

I would also add some kind of drain. The top compartment is a shallow tray, and if water gets in, it has nowhere to go. After the June storm, a little water sat in that tray for a day before I noticed it, and it left a watermark. Nothing rusted, because I keep metal hooks in the boxes, not in the tray, but it was a reminder that this is a tray, not a bucket. I keep a small towel in the boat and I wipe the tray out when it gets wet, but a couple of drain holes in the corners would make it a lot more forgiving.

And I would make the bottom a little more grippy. On the boat floor, the rack stays put because the floor is flat and the rack is heavy. On the tailgate of my truck, it slides a few inches every time I set it down to unlock the boat. It has never slid off, and I do not think it ever will, but a rubber pad on the bottom would kill the annoyance entirely. None of these are dealbreakers. They are the difference between a good product and a perfect one.

Who This Is For

The Plano StowAway 4-By is for the angler who already owns a pile of 3700 boxes and wants to stop living out of a soft-sided bag that collapses into a pile of hooks. It is for the guy who fishes from a boat, not the guy who hikes two miles to a creek. It is for the person who is tired of rebuying the same jig heads because the ones they own are buried somewhere in a compartment they cannot find. If that sounds like you, this rack will pay for itself in the first month, just in the lures you stop buying twice.

It is also for the angler who wants to see what they have. The clear lid shows the top tray, and the open front of the rack shows the labeled end of all four boxes at a glance. You know which box has the walleye stuff and which has the bass stuff. You stop buying duplicates because you can actually see that you already own eight chartreuse jig heads. I found a whole package of 1/8 ounce jig heads in the junk drawer box in May that I had bought the year before and forgotten about.

Who Should Skip It

Skip the Plano StowAway 4-By if you fish from the bank or from a kayak. It is too big to carry any distance, and it is not designed to be worn or strapped to anything. A soft tackle bag or a smaller utility box is the right tool for that job.

Skip it if you need a waterproof box. This is not a dry box. If your gear lives in a boat that sits uncovered in the weather, or if you regularly run rivers where water comes over the bow, you want a sealed box, not a rack system. The Plano StowAway 4-By is for dry boats and careful anglers.

And skip it if you want a permanent installation. The StowAway 4-By is designed to be carried and moved. It does not bolt to a deck, it does not raise your tackle to a comfortable height, and it does not lock. If you want a fixed tackle station, you are looking at a different product. There is nothing wrong with wanting that. This is just not it.