Setting Your Drag Properly - Set the strike drag with the rod in a holder, and tie the line to a scale to be precise. The scale should read between 25 and 33 percent of the line strength when the drag starts to slip. 30lbs test line should have a strike drag setting of between 7.5 and 10 pounds. If you set the drag on a light-tackle outfit with the rod tip pointed at the scale, the reading should be about 15 percent of the unknotted line strength. When the rod is in the fighting position friction will increase the drag.

Dealing With Tides & Currents - Knowledge of tides and currents is essential for salt water fishing success. Gamefish feeding activity is usually at its maximum during the period from one hour before to about one hour after a tide change. A tide cycle has two highs and two lows so there usually are at least two daylight tide change periods to fish each day with prime conditions. Charting one tide period, you’ll find low slack (the time of change), ebb (run out) and back to low slack. If the tide fluctuation is minimal between high and low, say less than 1 foot, fish may be most active throughout that tide cycle along rips, in eddies and many times in open water where the wind may help push more water. While the slack tide is usually a slow period of fish activity, the time just before slack tide can be particularly productive when you encounter a strong current. Fishing wrecks or inshore structure effectively often requires keeping your bait or lure in the strike zone, close to the structure. So the slower moving water just prior to the slack tide can be just right to bounce a jig or dangle a bait right in front of fish like grouper, snapper, snook, and other structure-hugging species. In general, you'll have about three hours of prime fishing time around each tide change, and it's extremely important to fish these periods intensely.

If the tides are moving very fast, many species such as snook, grouper, redfish, and others, will seek shelter around structure such as points of islands, rocks, jetties, docks, fallen trees, and other submerged obstructions so they don’t have to battle the strong current, but can still benefit from the food it will push by. These will be the places to seek when you know you’ll be dealing with fast moving water.

During the full and new periods, the pull of the moon creates what’s known as “Spring
Tides,” which are usually the strongest tides of the month. When you see them on your tide chart, looking for fish around structure should be part of your game plan. Believe it or not, even many miles offshore, the effect of those spring tides can be felt. So if you plan to bottom fish a certain reef drop-off or wreck, you’ll want to try to find a way to present your offerings close to bottom structure, where the fish you target are most likely to be waiting for their next meal to be served by the moving water.

Sharp Hooks For More Hook-ups - Remember when Mustad and Eagle Claw were practically your only hook choices? Well, nowadays there are many more companies making good quality hooks for a wide variety of purposes. Owner, Gamakatsu, Daiichi, VMC, Tru-turn and others have joined the ranks, manufacturing hooks for everything from big game trolling to live baiting, and on to worm fishing for bass.

While many anglers still think a hook is just a hook, new technology has lead to advances in hook design that can actually help increase your hook-up ratio. Shapes, for instance, are no longer limited to the basic 3 or 4 types we’ve been accustomed to. We now have more different hook types
available in the market than most of anglers will ever need. Obviously, this is a big plus for us, since we can now shop for hooks that are tailor made for any specific purpose. And whether you want a hook with a big eye to tie on a heavy leader, one with a needle eye for wire leaders, a bent eye to snell it on, prefer a dark finish so its less visible, or a short shank and an offset point to fish live-bait with, you are sure to find just what you need at your local tackle store.

Several variations of the classic “J” style hook O’Shaugnessy, for instance, are now offered with different shank lengths, different wire gauges, and even different eye types. Then there’s the short-shank live bait hooks, some offset, some not; bass worm hooks, some offset, some not; and the increasingly popular circle hooks, said to be the most fish friendly, since they tend to imbed in the corner of a fish’s mouth, making their removal easy and increasing the fish’s chances for survival. Add a wide selection of finishes, from nickel plating to bronze, polished stainless steel, and the new teflon coating said to penetrate better, and you begin to feel the need for research before buying your next box of hooks. While you may have a favorite hook style or two that you absolutely must have when you target your preferred gamefish, there is room for others. And you may be surprised to find that one of the new hooks in the market actually does a better job than that old classic you’ve been using since you were a kid.

Perhaps one of the greatest new developments in hooks has come in their sharpness. Several companies now offer chemically sharpened points that are far superior to the old machined points often dulled by the cadmium, nickel or similar coating used my most companies to prevent a hook from rusting. Many of the new hooks are sharp enough for most applications right out of the box these days, in fact, Owner, one company making some of today’s more popular hooks, introduced a new point design used on many of their hook models. The new point now includes flat cutting edges that penetrate extremely well and do not require any sharpening.

Wait, I don’t mean for you to get rid of all the hooks in your tackle box and buy new ones. Most hooks will perform as well as their newly designed counterparts after just touching up their points with a hook file. Carrying a good supply of the latest super sharp hooks in your box can be quite an investment, reason why there still are a number of old classics I will not part with, I simply make sure their points have been honed before they go into battle, particularly when tough saltwater fish will be my intended target.

Sharpening a hook usually requires the creation of cutting edges along its point to ensure better penetration in a hard mouth such as that of a tarpon, grouper or even a snook. And that means using a file or a sharpening stone to slightly reshape the point of a hook from its original roundness to a triangular or diamond-like shape where flat cutting edges can be created.

If I had to pick one sharpening style, I’d always opt for triangulation. This requires flattening of a hook’s point in 3 sides in order to create an equal number of cutting edges. Most experts will agree that a triangular point will penetrate better in the hard mouth of a fish, reason why you’ll always find hooks of top tarpon guides filed in a perfect pyramid shape.

When it comes to sharpening tools, there are several options in the market these days, some are even electrical or battery operated, but a basic hook file or sharpening stone is far more portable, and will do a fine job without ever running out of juice. Personally, I prefer using slim diamond-chip boards made by a company called E-Z LAP. They are a little more expensive than a hook file or stone (about $8.00 each) but they work amazingly well, and can put super sharp edges on any hook within seconds.

These E-Z Lap sharpeners come in different grates - fine, medium and coarse, to work with different size hooks. And because these diamond-chip boards are so thin, they fit easily within the bite gap of hooks as small as size 4’s and 6’s. I use a medium grate board for # 1 hooks or smaller, and opt for the coarse for 1/0’s and up. As is the case with sharpening stones, diamond-chip boards don’t rust even after being submerged in saltwater, and that makes them completely maintenance-free as well.

When it comes time to test the sharpness of a hook, a surface resembling the cartilage you’re likely to encounter in a fish’s mouth during actual fishing conditions will be your best gauge. That’s why testing the point on your finger tips will never give you an accurate measure of a hook’s true sharpness. Running a hook along your thumbnail is a far better way to find out if your hook is ready for action. If the hook is sharp enough, the point will catch on your nail while sliding flat on the hook’s outer edge without altering the angle. If the hook just runs along the nail without catching, you better hone those edges a bit more.

One of the more common mistakes made when sharpening a hook is grinding the point into a long, thin needle-like tip. Fine points can bend or break under as little as 2 or 3 pounds of pressure, making it impossible to get good penetration. A shorter, more stout hook point is far more desirable than a long thin one, as it will be able to withstand the initial abrupt pressure of a hook-set. Plus, needing to penetrate less to sink past the barb, a shorter, more compact point will always result in better hook-ups.

By the way, the barb of many hooks can often prevent the point from penetrating deep enough to ensure a solid hook-up, so it’s a good idea to file down the barb while you sharpen your hooks. Filing the barb completely off will give you the best penetration possible, and will make it a synch to remove the hook from a fish’s mouth. A small barb, however, will still allow for easy hook removal, but will help keep the hook in place during battle, making it harder for a fish to get rid of it during a jump or a long run, something most anglers can surely appreciate.

While there’s no denying that good tackle can help you catch more fish, you should first upgrade the little things that can make a big difference before you go out and spend big dollars on that hot new reel and a graphite rod. Hooks are really inexpensive in comparison, and they can often mean the difference between fishing success and failure. So take a few minutes to look at the terminal tackle in your tackle box, you could just be a few hooks away from catching more fish.

Lure Customizing Tricks - One of my favorite pastimes as a child was tinkering with my fishing lures, trying to make them better. Once, flipping through the pages of a how-to issue of Popular Mechanics, I found the plans to build a pair of wooden plugs. The plugs sort of looked like one of today’s famous Rebel or Rapala lures, though the finish wasn’t quiet as fancy. I remember they both had a lip that help impart a very neat wobble to the lures. I actually built several different version of those plugs, and was intrigued by the slight variations I found in the action, despite having followed the instructions faithfully during the construction process. It was then that I began tinkering with ways to control the action and the depth of not only those lures, but a lot of others as well.

Of course, nowadays, lures of just about every size, color, and action are readily available at just about any sporting good store. But some of them, I found, can be customized to perform better for specific situations. The Rat-L-Trap, one of my all-time favorite plugs, is a good example. I’ve used it shallow and deep, inshore and offshore, in freshwater and in the salt, and I’m convinced that there isn’t a better lure to cover lots of water and locate fish in a hurry (other companies have introduced similar types of lipless crankbaits like the Bagley’s Shad-O-llac, the Berkley Frenzy, Yo-Zuri Vibe, MirrOlure Rockin’ Rattl’r, and Rattlin’ Rapala – and the tips that follow would likely work with these lures as well.)

Anglers who’ve used the Rat-L-Trap for some time know that all but the Saltwater and Magnum models come rigged with a large treble hook on the belly, and a smaller one hanging from the tail. Bill Lewis, the maker of Rat-L-Traps, does install heftier hardware, including two big trebles of equal size on the larger models. But the 1/2 Oz. size, my favorite for the backcountry, still comes with a small rear treble that just isn’t strong enough to hold a big
fish. That problem cost me several nice snook and redfish, before I finally decided to do something about it.

The dilemma was, of course, that I couldn’t just substitute the small rear treble with a larger, stronger one, since having two large trebles allows them to meet and often tangle. But once, aggravated after losing a lunker linesider in the Ten Thousand Islands, I clipped off the mangled little treble with my pliers, took off the larger one from the belly of the lure, and then put that hook in back of the plug. I didn’t know it yet, but that turned out to be a drastic change. No, it didn’t alter the action of the rattler at all, but with the single treble tucked behind its body as it swims, the Rat-L-Trap far more weedless, and I can now cast it tight into the mangrove roots, and even retrieve it slowly over oyster bars without getting hung up.

That little change turned out to be a major improvement, and soon after I made the switch, I also realized that the big single treble was hooking and holding most of the fish that struck the artificial. I noticed no reduction in hook-ups, and now I could fight and land big fish without the fear of straightening the hook. We’re talking serious improvement here!

After a little more tinkering with single hooks and trebles of various types, I decided to completely forgo the factory trebles, opting to install a single quadruple strength treble a size larger than the original belly hook, in the back. The heavier gauge wire of the larger hook still did not alter the action, and I haven’t met a snook yet that could bend open one of these extra strength hooks. The split rings, by the way, have never been a problem for me. But you can trade the original ones for a larger size also, if it makes you feel safer. Note that while this works well on sinking lures, it may not produce such great results on floating lures, which depend on a specific level of balance and buoyancy to perform at their best. A floating Rapala, for instance, can carry very little extra weight, so adding bigger, heavier duty hooks is likely to hinder its action.

My only other complaint about the Rat-L-Trap is that its metallic finishes, which both the fish and I tend to favor, seems to chip off fairly easily. Again, I know bass are not nearly as tough on a lure as the gamefish we Florida anglers target in mangrove country, but somehow it’s always the one lure that’s getting all the strikes that seems to lose its flash at the wrong moment.

Though some say it’s the loud rattling noise that instigates strikes and not the color or the flash of these lures, I’m still a firm believer in flashy plugs, especially when fishing in murky or tannic water. So, as insurance I always carry with me some reflective tape, the kind with the self-adhesive back sold at most craft stores (and a few tackle shops), along with permanent markers in green and black, just in case I need to touch up a lure quickly and make it look more presentable in the midst of a good bite or even a feeding frenzy.

The reflective tape, also known as metallic or Mylar tape, is fairly inexpensive and comes in a wide array of colors. I stick to silver, gold and chartreuse, the three colors I use most, according to the water clarity or lack thereof. I cut the tape into strips about 3/8 of an inch wide, and store them in a small Ziplock bag to keep them dry and at their flashiest whenever called into action. I use only one strip per side. I tried using larger pieces of tape cut in the shape of the lure, but they muffled the rattling of the lure a bit, and I’d rather keep my Rat-L-Traps as loud as possible. Besides, the flash of one thin strip does the job, so why take any chances giving up sound? This same material can be added to any hard bait to give it additional flash if desired. It can often spark up some action during a slow day. The magic markers? I use them to paint the back of the lures if necessary. I like the contrast of the light flashy sides and a darker back, and many fish have agreed with me over the years.

So, you think all this tinkering with a lure is more trouble than it’s worth? Trust me, even small alterations can make a world of difference sometimes. Bottom line: is a snook or a redfish worth changing a hook or touching up a lure? It is to me, every time!

Texas Rigging Soft Plastics in 5 Easy Steps!
1. Insert the hook point into the head of the soft plastic lure.
2. Thread the hook inside the lure about 1/4 inch.
3. Bring the hook point out of the lure (the underside) and pull the shank of the hook through the lure until eye is right at head
4. Flip the hook point upward, and push it back into the lure body.
5. Go all the way through the lure body, and then pull the hook back just enough to keep the point hidden inside the plastic.