With just a couple trips left needed to wrap up our Year of the Crank coverage, soon, it will be time to turn our attention to next year’s theme. 2010 marks the 10th year anniversary for TackleTour. In traditional anniversary terms, the 10th year is a celebration of tin or aluminum. Whomever dreamed up these anniversary gifted themes must have been a fisherman!

So what does TackleTour have in store to celebrate 10 years of bringing you the latest in tackle news and reviews? I can’t quite reveal that yet, but rest assured, those plans are already underway as evidenced by our 2010 Calendar featuring Ms. Casey and her friends. Incidentally, have you bought yours yet?

Speaking of Ms. Casey, what I can do at this point in time is give you a sneak peak at some of the artwork we’ve completed to kick off our 10th year anniversary celebration. Only one thing is missing from this poster, and that’s the declaration of our official theme (replaced by “xxxxx…”).

So what do you think? Are you ready to turn the page on 2009 and find out what TackleTour has in store for 2010? If you’re a follower of TackleTour, new or old, help us kick things off by responding to this blog and sharing how you found your way to our site and maybe a little bit about what keeps you around. The more excitement we feel, the sooner we’re likely to reveal what’s in store for 2010!

With June almost over, we are past the halfway point for the Year of the Crank. That’s right, we’re on the downhill slope for 2009 and that means 2010 is just around the corner. But what we’re approaching is not just another year. 2010 is a significant milestone for TackleTour – it marks our 10th Year Anniversary!

Rest assured, we’re already in preparation for this event and have our theme for 2010 all planned out, but before we move forward, let’s take a look back:

TackleTour.com made its debut with its very first article on December 8, 2000. Any guesses as to what it might have been? With the popularity of our rod and reel reviews, my first guess was one of those, but nope. It was in fact, the Yamamoto Hula Grub (click on the photo to view the article):

So what the, was the very first reel review? Was it a baitcaster or spinning reel? Can you believe the Daiwa Spinmatic-X (Feb 20, 2001)?

It took almost half a year before a rod review made it to the site and in fact, it was a combo, Quantum’s XLSP1000 UL Rod + XL00S2 reel (May 19, 2001):

The first real mainstream rod to be reviewed? Why of course, the G.Loomis MBR783C IMX (September 7, 2001):

It’s both fun and funny to look back at these early reviews to see #1 how short the articles were and #2 how few pictures there were. TackleTour has come a long way since those early days and we continue to challenge ourselves each year with more content and quantifiable data against which to objectively evaluate every piece of tackle we write about.

In my mind, 2004 marks the real turn for the worst for TackleTour because that’s when yours truly joined the team. How they ever decided to let me in on the party and why, I will never know, but the Enthusiast section of the site was christened by this article on October 7, 2004:

And as I’ve mentioned, we’ve been cranking it up ever since until finally, we’ve declared 2009 the Year of the Crank. So what do we have in store for 2010? We’ll just have to wait and see as the countdown to 2010 has now officially begun!

But before we get there, let us know how you found your way to TackleTour and what you enjoy or don’t enjoy most about the site!