Old man winter is still here, the temperatures are still low and the wind is blowing so I guess I wont be hooking up the boat today. I talked about rod and reel maintenance earlier now lets talk about some lure “Tweaks” that at least in my opinion have helped me get more bites. Always remember, if you have confidence in what your doing on the water you will take the time to present your offering correctly and it will produce fish. If you don’t believe your going to catch fish then you wont take the time to present your bait right and more often than not you go home empty handed.
Some of my favorite lure modifications are as follows. Replacing the hooks on your crank baits with sharp red hooks. Red hooks resemble a blood trail, like a bleeding fish and if you understand bass they will always pick the easiest, injured prey first. Me personally, I just replace the front hook because I want to present the image that my poor little fish is bleeding from the gills and is just asking to be attacked. I also replace the rear hooks with some good quality super sharp hooks, just not in red. I personally like the X-Point and Diachhi hooks, super sharp right out of the package and great quality, available at Bass Pro Shops. Gamakatsu also makes a good hook also available at Bass Pro Shops. These hooks are a little on the pricey side but well worth the money. If you cant afford these expensive ones get yourself a file and sharpen your hooks to a sticky sharp. It will make a difference in your hook up ratio.
On a side note, I also like to use red hooks when fishing soft plastics. I have been doing this long before it was “The In Thing” and I had many people laugh at me. Let me explain. At the time I was dating this lady who had a son and he got hold of my tackle and proceeded to paint some of my worm hooks red with finger nail polish. At first I was a little upset at him and then he asked me to promise him I would try them at my upcoming tournament, I reluctantly said yes. I got teased for about the first 2 hours of the tournament by my boater, I didn’t own a boat at the time. He stopped teasing me about 3 hours in because I had my limit and was culling fish and he was still working on getting his second fish. It was my turn to laugh at him when I collected my money for winning the tournament.
Anyways, back to the hooks. Another trick is to take the hooks and bend the point shank slightly, where it is a little off center from the center shaft, remember the Excaliber rotating Trebel Hooks? I take pliers and grab the hook at the bottom of the bend and just kind of lean the tip to the left a little. Do this to all 3 points. What this does is makes it where the hooks get contact with the bass’s jaws a little better, the down side, it makes it a lot more difficult to fish around structure because they do get hung up more. Another up side is when the bass is jumping they can’t use the center shaft as leverage to get the hook loose. In my opinion the good points out weigh the bad.
Another lure modification worth doing is painting your own lures. Yes, you can spend high dollar and get lure with great finishes right out of the box but you can also get some lures out of the bargin Box and you local sporting goods counter and transform them into fish catching monsters.
Raid your wife’s fingernail polish, yeah I know, WHAT?? My wife has or should I say had this fingernail polish with fine hologram glitter in it. I looked closely at it one day as I was “reading the paper” in the rest room and noticed that it had glitter with allot of colors you would see on the expensive lures so I confiscated it and tried it out. On a side note, if your not experienced in applying this stuff make sure you try it out on something first because it can be a bear getting it off of a plastic or wood lure once you put it on. Go as thin as possible because you don’t want to put to much on one side and throw the lure’s balance off, making it run sideways in the water. Most of the time you want your lure to run true, I’ll go into when you don’t want it to in another article.
Take the red fingernail polish and paint little red gills on your lure, where the gills would normally be, again, be careful not to glob it on. My wife didn’t have black so I had to buy some but I use black to paint that little round dot that shad have on their sides on my shad colored lures.
Dress your treble hooks. Make them look like little tails. You can buy them pre made or you can make them for considerably less. Make sure you start out with good quality hooks. Hold off on bending the points like I described above, this will make the wrapping process so much easier. Trust me, I speak from experience here. Get some mylar strips cut very thin and wrap them with red thread just under the hook eye and put a dab of clear finger nail polish to hold the end down. You would be amazed how this looks in the water.
Do all of these things help? As long as you believe they will work then they will work. Just remember, there is no magic bullet, there is no such thing. All those late night info-mercials are a joke. Let me rephrase that, there is a magic lure, It’s the one you truly believe will catch fish. The one you have confidence in. The one that you know in your mind will catch em because you will take the time and effort to figure out just how to present it to get them to bite that day.
Until Next Time, Good Luck and Tight Lines To Ya!
