You'd be amazed what foods fish will bite on if you just throw it on a hook. Cheese is a popular choice around here. This morning I was using bits of pepperoni because it was what I had brought for a snack. It's easy to carry bare hooks and if you're creative there are things out in the wilds that make fine bait....bugs for example.

I have hundreds of bare hooks. I figure, in a survival situation, I would set up several trot lines baited with whatever kind of bait I could find, and they could sit in the water while I try to catch something with my lures.

Pretty much the same idea as setting up several snares while you hunt.

Night lines are the way to go for survival when possible. Bare hooks weigh nothing and take up little space compared to commercial lures.

First I would like to salute anyone who routinely carries a fishing kit. I, too, have been fishing from an early age and it is probably what lead me to enjoy the outdoors more than any other activity.

Opinions are like you-know-what and elbows, everyone has one. So here's mine:

1. Ditch everything that is soft plastic or feathers; replace them with hard-bodied lures that will not melt, tear, tear out, etc.

2. Carry no bare hooks; replace them with the color and flash of various spoon-type and jig-type lures starting with tiny ice-fishing sizes. You can bait the hooks on the spoons or jigs, but there is usually no need for bait- spend your time fishing instead of looking for bait. If you want to use bait, use parts of the fish you catch.

3. Use flurocarbon line and leader, because it is essentially invisible in water and is typically much stronger for a given diameter than monofilament.

Learn to swim, rip, hop, and slack line each bait through all parts of the water column.

This is not a survival fishing kit, so leave the bare bones survival stuff out of it. You may find adopting this gear so effective that you will re-think the appropriateness of classic bare bones survival fishing gear.

I've lost enough lures and bare hooks over the years to have opened my own tackle shop. Either they get snagged on underwater objects and the line has to be cut, or a fish snaps the line and swims off with my lure/hook.

Bare hooks are cheap and light weight. I have hundreds of them and they present no burden to me. If I have to cut one loose, or if a fish swims off with it, it's no big deal. I have more.

Lures can be expensive. I hate it when I lose one. I don't see myself setting up trot lines with my lures. I would hate to wake up in the morning and find my lures gone.

Not talking trot lines with a recreational, not survival, fishing kit. What we are talking about is getting to fishing, and hopfully catching, quickly and without the need to find bait. It's about conserving the most limited recreational resource - time.

My experience is that if you get almost any offering in front of a fish, you stand a decent chance of catching it. it's playing the odds. More casts, more fish. More locations fished, more fish. Hard lures do this very well.

Of course, my opinion is based on just my own experience in recreational and tournament fishing for several decades.

I'm not saying either one is useless. I'm saying they both have their uses, and that's why I have both.

Its enough to drive a good man crazy; all those lures. I have a hundred of them to be sure. They are more or less effective and my kit will always have a few different kinds, usually the ones on the smaller side. But the one lure that has always worked best for me and gives me the fondest memories is...
hook + worm

Back when I used to wet a line, I seemed to catch more fish, no matter what the species, with a lure that had silver and blue on it. Lots on Kastmasters and Rapalas...