Why do you always have to upgrade hooks and split rings when you fork out an arm-and-a-leg for a high-end Japanese lure?
You pay enough anyway, so shouldn’t the terminal tackle on the lure be good enough to hold a decent cod?
Well, it’s a bit of a double edged sword. Here’s why.
To get us punters high quality Japanese lures at the best price they come retrofitted with the hooks and rings for the species they were intended to catch – namely, large and small mouth bass.
Take a Megabass I-Slide 262T for instance, their thin gauge, razor sharp hooks are perfect for a species that maxes out at around 10lbs – A Largemouth Bass.
So the lure and its terminal tackle are bang on for the intended species.
However, due to a combination of inquisitive Australian importers and Globalisation, we have been exposed to a myriad of shiny new lures intended for other species, which, by chance, are also dynamite on our Aussie natives.
Think, Jackall Gigantarel or Jackall Gantia on big cod – it seems impossible, but they were not built for this species!
But here is the other side of that sword, most lure companies won’t bother changing a lure’s terminal tackle for a minority market like Australia – the quantities of lures, and thus their margins, are just too small.
Harry ‘Hank’ Watson from Jackall Australia explains this in a little more depth.
“It’s not as simple as just upgrading hooks and rings as the parent company has to re tune the lure to make it do what it’s supposed to.
It’s not just a matter of changing hooks on some lures. Hook changes will affect actions/depths/sink rates etc if not done right”, said Hank.
So, the majority of times we get imported lures straight from the source, they come with the hooks and rings aligned to their local species.
This leaves the importers with a hard choice, either provide the lures ‘as is’ to the Aussie market at the most competitive price possible, or pay someone to take each lure out of the packet and upgrade the hooks and split rings.
The later option, while seemingly the better path, will, inevitably, lead to an increase in price.
So, if anglers think that Japanese lures are already over-priced, imagine their rage if they saw an additional price hike of close to $7-$10 PER LURE, once you factor in all the upgrade overheads.
So by leaving the lures ‘as is’ it gives the angler the best price and a ‘choice’ if they want to upgrade or not.
Also, it’s worth noting that the hooks on Japanese lures like a Deps Slide Swimmer 175, while not intended for cod, are not made of cardboard and can still hold a fair lump of Goodoo before being compromised.
Yes, this is just my opinion and I’m sure there are a number of other factors and opinions out there, but I hope it at least shines some light on a very topical debate.
