JimH wrote:
I had not been fishing since Spring and my tackle box sat inside the dock
box. If you recall we had flooding on the river earlier this summer and
part of my dock box was underwater for a while.

I pulled the tackle box out the other day and saw that the bottom tray
(containing all my lures) was full of rusty water and the treble hooks on
the lures were all rusted.

I just got done cleaning the lures (running them in fresh water) to remove
the rusty goop on them. I plan to replace the rusty treble hooks on them.

My question is..........do you think an odor of rust on the lure body will
keep fish from hitting these lures? If I soak them in the sink with
dishwashing soap will that leave a worse odor on the lures that the fish
will stay away from?

TIA!

Doesn't the art or science of fishing with lures depend primarily on
****ing the fish off so badly that they will strike out at the
obnoxious noise, color, smell, vibration, etc of any lures cast or
trolled in the vicinity? Maybe the more you irritate the fish, the
harder they strike?

Are there studies that indicate the fish are actually fooled into
thinking the lures have some food value?

Unless the fish are striking a red, white, and silver spoon or a copper
spinner strung with red, blue, white and yellow beads because they
think such devices are legitimate bait fish, it probably wouldn't make
a lot of difference whether the lures actually smelled like a fish or
not.