I am pretty rough on my fishing rods and reels, and over the years I have ripped many lure keeps off rods. With their extra weight, swimbaits in particular have a tendency to destroy the small wire hook keeps. I have come up with a couple ways of dealing with this problem and thought I would share with you.

The first can be done by simply drilling about an 1/8" hole in your casting rod trigger. This is pretty straight forward and does not require any special tools. This also keeps your rods a bit less top heavy when on the deck of your boat.

The second lure keep will require a little bit more. I simply double up on a large 1/4" size stainless steel hook keep and re wrap the base of the rod. This is obviously a bit more time consuming and requires more special tools. This method is quite strong and will hold up to heavy baits.