Why Did I Lose That Snook?

If you want to be the best, you have to constantly challenge yourself. Whenever you lose a snook, you have to ask yourself, "What could I have done differently"? Sometimes the answer is as simple as "sharpen my hook". At night, you get complacent cast after cast, bumping the bottom without a bite. Those occasional contacts with rocks and other bottom structure like oysters can dull your hook. If you are not careful, you won't find out your hook was dull until after that 40" snook comes up jumping and spits the hook. Could a sharper hook have made the difference? You will never know. But you can prevent such questions by periodically checking your hook to make sure it is sharp. It takes less than a minute to sharpen a hook with a file or stone. If the a jig hook is too bent I throw it in the recycle pile and melt it down later with a new hook. Some live bait hooks come fairly dull out of the box. My favorite live bait hook, the Mustad 9144 is such a hook. I sit with a box of 50 Mustad 9144 with my stone and drag them over a set of groves I have carved out over the years. You can do this watching T.V. It is not that difficult and you wind up with an awesome laser sharp hook for a fraction of the price of those fancy Japanese hooks.

The bottom line is good snook fisherman increase their odds by sharpening their hooks.