Treble Hook Upgrades

[Dypsis]

I understand that many people swap out the stock treble hooks with Owner, KVD's, Gamakatsu, etc on cranks and jerkbaits.  

 

Since I am really going to focus on improving my cranking game this year and I currently don't want to spend X number of dollars buying new trebles - can I simply use a file and sharpen the stock hooks to make them better.  

 

Is another reason for swapping out hooks as they are a higher quality all around - won't bend out or similar?  Anything else I should consider?

 

Matt

[scaleface]

I use Mustad round bends    and VMC round bends. They are inexpensive .

 

 Sharpening trebels is difficult . I do it sometimes. I take the diamond file on a leatherman  , and lay two barbs of the trebel flat against it. Then gently apply pressure with two fingers and work back and forth. I repeat until all the barbs are worked over. Then I replace them with mustad  round bends or VMC  round bends 

[Catch and Grease]

Glenn made a video about sharpening fishing hooks, he doesn't use a treble in the video but I'm sure it would work the same way.

http://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-videos/hook-sharpen.html

[smalljaw67]

All new hooks are sharp, the problem with a lot of stock trebles is they are made of light wire so they bend easily and break or they use a bronze hook that will rust faster than black nickel. Now, when it comes to jerkbaits with light wire hooks, you need to replace with a light wire if it is a suspending bait but a good quality hook will be a bit stronger. The KVD 1.5 square bill has sharp stock hooks but they don't hold up but if you aren't burning them through nasty cover and you keep your line down to 10lb and play the fish out, then the stock hooks will be fine for awhile.