BALTIMORE (Map, News) - With a little nail polish, a Brillo pad, some hooks, split rings and craft store glitter, you can take those sorry-looking lures in an old tackle box and spruce them up to look almost new — and to catch more fish.

Let’s face it . Crankbaits become worn and dull looking, spoons and spinner blades tarnish, jigs and spinnerbaits get chipped, and soft plastics become worn and useless. Well, not quite useless.

Let’s take the soft plastics first. Saved but damaged soft plastics can be made almost like new by welding them with a flame or using savable parts of different lures to make a fishable Frankenstein’s monster.

Do this with a flame after trimming off old and useless soft plastic. Then weld the new parts and pieces into a new lure. It is also possible to mix colors, tails and legs to make up a creature that only its mommy could love.

While any flame (cigarette lighter, grill starter) will work, best is a small alcohol lamp available from hobby shops. Melt ends of damaged worm parts in the flame and then quickly touch and “weld” them together to make a new lure. After any repair or heat sealing, dump the results into a dish of cool water to rapidly cure the sealed edges.

Polish metal lures such as spoons, spinner blades and spinnerbaits with steel wool or a Brillo pad. Then rinse clean and dry. If a lure has a tendency to tarnish rapidly, spray coat it with a clear protective finish.

Tidy up metal-finish lures and plastic crankbaits with a clear spray finish and with the addition of craft store glitter. First, clean the lure using a scrubbing pad for crankbaits. Be careful of the attached hooks.

Once clean, spray the lure with clear finish, and while still wet, sprinkle it with your choice of glitter. I prefer silver or gold, in fine or microfine glitter. Do this over a shoebox to collect and reuse any glitter. To protect the glitter, finish with a final spray coat. The advantage of glitter is that it gives any lure a scale look to simulate baitfish.

For crankbaits that are really banged up, consider a quick touch-up with paints. Sure, your friends will laugh at the results, but the fish won’t care. Paint choices are the small bottles such as hobby shop Testor’s or nail polish that has the advantage of coming with a brush in every bottle. It’s important to stick to one brand, since some paints adversely react with different brands.

Paint stripes, spots, gills, lateral lines, light bellies and dark backs similar to baitfish. Spray a non-reacting clear coat over the result for protection. Use these same tips for bodies of jigs, spinnerbaits and buzzbaits, painting a solid color, perhaps with some added eyes.

Make eyes with two different size nail heads (one light colored for the eye, one black and smaller for the pupil) dipped into paint and touched to the lure.

Lures with free-swinging hooks often end up with damaged, broken or dull hooks. Change these easily with new hooks and split rings, using split ring pliers. Available from tackle shops, these special long-nose pliers have a single tooth, sort of like Ollie (Oliver Jethro Dragon III) from the old Kukla, Fran and Ollie show. The tooth allows opening and removing the old ring easily while adding a new treble, double or single hook.

Refurbish jigs, spinnerbaits and buzzbaits by removing the old skirt and adding a new one of the same or different color.

For existing hooks, check for sharpness and touch up with a hook hone or file. Triangulate the hook by running the file at an angle over the point from both sides, then touching up the bottom of the point.

Simple tricks like this over a few minutes time can increase hits, make fishing more fun and prevent a lost fish that might be that super trophy to add to your fishing resume.

C. Boyd Pfeiffer is an internationally known sportsman and award-winning writer on fishing, hunting and the outdoors. He can be reached at cbpfeiffer@msn.com