5 overlooked essentials for successful lure fishing

It constantly surprises me that so many keen fishers fail to employ any or all five of these important tools on a far more regular basis.

If you don’t already own examples of each category, consider adding them to your arsenal at the earliest possible opportunity!

Having an effective de-snagging tool on board can save you hundreds of dollars a year or even more in the form of recovered lures that would otherwise have been lost and left in our aquatic environments to potentially entangle wildlife or endanger swimmers.

There are several effective forms of de-snagger. Heavy weights fitted with short chains or loops and attached to a length of strong cord can be quickly clipped to a snagged line and slide down to (hopefully) disentangle the lure and pull it clear.

These work well and offer the advantage of being applicable in deeper water (limited only by the length of the cord).

However, sliding weights can’t be used to reach up into trees if your lure is snagged above the waterline. For that purpose, telescopic poles with a pigtail of spring wire at the end that can twist onto your snagged line and be used to poke the lure clear are perfect.

These also perform well on snags below the waterline, but are limited to the fully extended length of the pole. For this reason, many keen lure fishers carry both types of de-snagger.

Sharp hooks are absolutely critical to consistent success in all forms of fishing, but especially lure casting and trolling.

These days, most hooks are wickedly sharp straight out of the pack, but they will all dull over time as a result of repeated contact with rocks, timber, boat hulls, fish teeth and even the lure’s body itself.

Corrosion can also dull your hooks.

Check your hook points regularly by touching them lightly against the ball of your thumb, or dragging them across a fingernail.

They need to be “sticky sharp”: in other words, instantly grabbing at any surface they come into contact with. If they’re not sticky sharp, sharpen them!

Sharpening stones, emery boards, fine-grained files and purpose-made hook hones of varying coarseness grades (often using diamond-based abrasive coatings) are perfect for this job. Carry at least a couple: ideally one in each tackle box.

Most hooks fitted to lureseventually will become too blunt, damaged or corroded to remain effective, and will require swapping out.

Many savvy fishers — especially in the tropical north of the country — also upgrade the hardware (hooks and rings) on imported lures as a matter of habit to deal with tough local customers such as barramundi and mangrove jacks.

To quickly and easily perform these important tasks, you’ll require an effective pair of split ring pliers. There are many on the market, but some perform much better than others.

Buy yourself a dedicated pair of quality split ring pliers and keep them solely for that task rather than relying on standard, long-nosed, de-hooking pliers with a basic split ring opening tooth built into the end of one jaw.

If you fish with floating/diving, suspending or slow sinking hard-bodied lures in either fresh or saltwater, it can be really handy to have a quick, easy method for adjusting the buoyancy of those lures.

This will allow control over their sink or rise rates when paused, attitude in the water, and even their casting performance.

Adding a small amount of weight at a critical position on the body of a diving plug or minnow can sometimes turn a good lure into a great one, and dramatically boost your strike rate as a result.

There are a couple of ways of doing this. Fitting heavier or lighter hooks and rings to the lure is often enough, but if you need a little more weight, mouldable putties and various adhesive-backed, stick-on weights are ideal for the job, although not always easy to find in our local tackle stores.

Be aware that lure buoyancy will also vary slightly with the salinity of the water (lures float higher in salty water), and also that adding too much weight will inevitably sandbag the action of most lures and likely reduce their appeal to some fish.

Add only a little weight at a time before test swimming the lure.

Debate rages amongst keen fishers as to the effectiveness or otherwise of various additives, scents and bite stimulants — both commercially-made products and various “home brews”.

Most anglers agree, however, that these potions certainly do no harm and can, at the very least, help to mask human odours and various fish-repelling taints from boat fuel, bug sprays, sunscreen lotions and the like.

In some scenarios — especially when making very slow presentations with soft plastic lures or fishing in dirty water, low light and after dark — scent additives almost certainly increase both the strike rate and the length of time a fish will retain a lure in its mouth before attempting to spit it out.

This can make a big difference to your catch rate. Try various scent additives for yourself and decide which brand or flavour you prefer, then get into the habit of using it regularly.

Carrying and employing these five often-overlooked essentials for better lure fishing are exactly the sort of cutting edge habits that separate the “10 per centers” from the rest of the fishing pack: those 10 per cent of anglers who consistently catch 90 per cent of the fish!

Are you keen to join that group?

Steve ‘Starlo’ Starling is one of Australia’s best known and most respected fishing communicators.

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