With the recent rain we are having, I decided to take an afternoon and clean out the tackle box, wash it and in general reorganize it. Amazing the amount of crud but even more amazing to me was the number of hooks on my various spoons, jigging raps and ripping raps that were dull and or damaged. Of the 125 assorted lures, I changed out ~35 treble hooks due to broken points and or missing/broken. I had over a dozen 2 legged treble hooks and many lures had very dull hooks.
All are sharpened now and hopefully when the weather settles down, my hook up percentage will increase. Jig fishing, I rarely pay attention because for me it is an automatic gesture to sharpen the hook as soon as I tie it on. Need to force myself to do that with the larger lures especially since I love fishing them in rocks.
My big baits, either time consuming to make or costly to purchase get lovingly air dried then back into their proper storage compartment. However, due to low light and darkness, I rarely check the hooks. Gotta change that. No excuse for putting a damaged lure back in its ready to use location.
So during thus lull in fall fishing do yourselves a favor and clean out your tackle box, check your hooks and know that you are ready for fall/winter fishing. Gotta keep the odds stacked in your favor.
Also, check your line guides escpecially the ceramics for cracks. Fishing with a guy a couple weeks ago that was having severe line breakage. Gave him new line (suffix 832 braid) got him respooled it helped but he was still getting broken line. Started looking at his rod and found the tip was cracked and chipped (a common issue with the way we rig - swivel, fluoro leader then a durolock snap.) If you get careless and drag the swivel thru the eyelets it can crack or chip them. I happened to have a spare tip that fit his rod so changed it out and stripped off ~30 feet of line and ended his breakage.
All are sharpened now and hopefully when the weather settles down, my hook up percentage will increase. Jig fishing, I rarely pay attention because for me it is an automatic gesture to sharpen the hook as soon as I tie it on. Need to force myself to do that with the larger lures especially since I love fishing them in rocks.
My big baits, either time consuming to make or costly to purchase get lovingly air dried then back into their proper storage compartment. However, due to low light and darkness, I rarely check the hooks. Gotta change that. No excuse for putting a damaged lure back in its ready to use location.
So during thus lull in fall fishing do yourselves a favor and clean out your tackle box, check your hooks and know that you are ready for fall/winter fishing. Gotta keep the odds stacked in your favor.
Also, check your line guides escpecially the ceramics for cracks. Fishing with a guy a couple weeks ago that was having severe line breakage. Gave him new line (suffix 832 braid) got him respooled it helped but he was still getting broken line. Started looking at his rod and found the tip was cracked and chipped (a common issue with the way we rig - swivel, fluoro leader then a durolock snap.) If you get careless and drag the swivel thru the eyelets it can crack or chip them. I happened to have a spare tip that fit his rod so changed it out and stripped off ~30 feet of line and ended his breakage.