Old Fishing Tackle: Care & Cleaning

I find myself accumulating a rather large collection of old fishing lures as time goes by. A lot of people would consider it junk, but I think of caring for old fishing tackle as a way of preserving history. But it's difficult, old fishing tackle easily rusts and is difficult to keep intact. I like to try to maintain them as much as possible in order to keep them as close to their original condition as possible. There are a few steps you can take in order to preserve old fishing tackle and the first I'd like to discuss is how to clean old rubber baits. I use a M-30 lanolin based hand cleaner. It cleans off the sticky stuff but also does a great job at restoring the old lure to its fresh scent. I usually just splash some on and squish it around the bait and leave it sit for an hour or two. After that I rinse it with warm water. You'll be surprised on how well this works for old fishing tackle with rubber.


Cleaning rusty old fishing tackle is another story, I always check to see if the tackle looks to delicate to even be able to handle a cleaning. If it seems delicate, it's more useful to just leave it be. If you choose to give it a go, I've found that the best way to clean old rusty fishing tackle is to use a sanding pen. I believe these were originally created for small chips in cars but they do work pretty well to remove rust from old fishing tackle. Just be sure to use them gently in order to not damage the lure.


I always want to mention that the way you store old fishing tackle is highly important. Very dry air can cause old fishing tackle to shrink very quickly, this causes the paint to crack. The best kind of temperature to store old fishing tackle is around 65-70 degrees inside a case with low humidity, around 40% humidity is ideal. It's also wise to occasionally open the case to allow humid air in if the humdity falls below that point. It is also relevant to note that keeping moisture out of the case is also very crucial in regards to storing old fishing tackle.


Following these guidelines I am able to store my old fishing tackle for a long period of time without any noticeable degradation. It's actually quite a lot of work to maintain old fishing tackle, but it is something I enjoy so I don't mind giving them a little of my time to keep them in shape.

Fishing Tackle: A Guide To Making It

Making fishing tackle can be a rewarding process. It's good to start with something simple. In this post I will teach you how to make a simple bobber, from there you can move on to making more advanced fishing tackle which I will teach you in following posts. The simplest bobbers possible are made by simply drilling a hill on the bottom of a small twig and then bind it on a simple wire loop. I usually then paint it with a easily seen color. As simple as this may sound, it actually works pretty well. You can even create more advanced bobbers with this method. A friend of mine uses a piece of a corn cob as a bobber and it works extremely well. To do this, cut off the end of a corn cob, you can then use sand paper to smooth it out. Drill a hole through the center of it and put the stick right through the hole. You can even slide the line through and under the stick to make a slip bobber. These are the type of projects I started before moving on to making more advanced fishing tackle.





I always think it’s a smart idea to start with simple things when trying to learn how to do something. Making fishing tackle can be very simplistic or very complex. I like using this ground-up approach and gradually building more complexity as I go along. I do this as a hobby; making fishing tackle is just something I enjoy, for some reason. People have asked me many times why I don’t simply just go purchase fishing tackle since it’s so cheap, I always tell them that there is something rewarding about using fishing tackle that you made yourself. Catching that first fish on fishing tackle that you made is extremely rewarding; at least it was for me. I always have had great luck catching fish with some of the more advanced fishing tackle that I have created. Some of them even managed to outperform lures that I have purchased, but of course this all depends on the day. Maybe it was simply luck. In the following posts to come, I will show you how to create some more advanced fishing tackle with more bells and whistles that you can give a try. Hopefully this short post gave you a small bit of foundation to start making your own fishing tackle.