Many hard sea fishing lures have poor hook up rates so it is extra important that you make sure the hooks are in the best shape they can be. If your lures do have poor hook ups you may like to consider changing the size of the hooks to better match the type of fish you are hunting. Small hooks won’t catch larger fish and large hooks won’t catch small fish.

Other things to consider are that bent or rusty hooks also won’t catch fish. If your hooks have been bent and reshaped several times then you should replace them. If you have lures which cannot have the hooks replaced, throw them away. They are no good for long term use and you will lose the best fish you’ve hooked with it.

The colored wooden or plastic lures often suffer from chips, gouges and scratches. These can, and should be repaired because these can unbalance the action in the water and scare off the fish rather than attract them. Fill the gouges with fiberglass putty, touch up the paint work with model paint ot nail polish. Octopus type lures can have new skirts tied onto them.

Finally you need to make sure that you store your traces and leaders properly so they don’t end up tangled, kinked and useless. Use a larger diameter device such as an old hand caster or large plastic bottle. The bigger the diameter the better as you want the traces to be stored as straight as possible. If you can remove the lures from the traces then you should store them separately in a dry container. I like to put corks over the points of the hooks to protect unwary fingers. I also like to store the sea fishing lures singly in their own containers, look for things like medicine bottles or even short lengths of plastic water pipe plugged at each end. If the containers are not see-through then it helps to put labels on them.

Follow these simple steps and keep using your saltwater lures for a long, long time.