heard about it, but i'm wondering how do you know when you need to? and what do you use to sharpen them? or do you just buy new hooks?

New hooks!

If I even begin to think the hook aint sharp enough I change them!

But you can buy little diamond hook sharpeners that are shaped like a pen and sharpen them! Last time I bought one years ago it was about $5!

I will change hooks on some baits for better sharper ones. But I also sharpen when I am on the water and don't want to take the time to change them (cranks) if I may have hooked a rock or something. It's good to know how to sharpen a hook. The diamond pen is what I carry.
The way I test the sharpness is the finger nail way. If I drag the point across my nail and it slides instaed of sticking it's time to sharpen.

If I even think my hook has a flaw I change it especially in competition, bites are too hard to come by to miss a fish over a bad hook....

+1

I change hooks also

+2

If you fish where there is a likely chance at large fish, there are two things that you should do many times in a full day of fishing and they are retie and change hooks. The retie is easy to identify with a quick feel of the line. For the hooks use only the better quality chemically sharpened hooks. I prefer Owner and Gamagatsu. A good quick check of a hooks sharpnes is to use you fingernail. Set the hook point down on to the back of a finger nail and the hook should be able to be held in place by the point of the hook when you do slight rolls of your hand and the hook point should feel very tackey on the nail when try to move the hook point across the nail. Next time you get a hold of a new Owner hook test it and you will see what a sharp hook should feel like on a finger nail.

I just started sharpening hooks. Unfortunately it took losing a couple of nice fish to convince me to do it. I have a Berkley line stripper with a sharpener on the end of it. Has anyone used this type sharpener? Thoughts on it?

If the hook won't stick in my finger nail when I pull on it, I sharpen it. I just swiped on of my wife's files that has the rough surface and it does a good job.

I used to sharpen hooks back in '94 or so, when good hooks were hard to find. Now I just keep hooks in my boat, if one seems dull, will change it out. Only takes a few minutes with a cheap pair of split ring pliers. I like the cheap split ring pliers better than the expensive ones. Seem to work better for me. Also, if you sharpen hooks, you might want to check them pretty closely. I am not sure how you would sharpen a needle point, the cutting points make a little more sense. The cheap (stock hooks on most baits) are pretty easy to sharpen, but once you sharpen them they are weeker than a good quality treble that is already super sharp.

Sharpening with a file can weaken carbon steel, so everytime you sharpen a point it will become weaker. Probably not a problem during a day, but it could certainly become a problem over time.

What I've heard and read many times, and I believe it, is modern quality hooks should not be sharpened -- they should be replaced. I guess they are so precisly manufactured, there's no way to manually sharpen them to get them to where they are out of the pack. With the ammount of money we pay for our gear, a new hook is a cheap way to make sure you have the best shot at putting a fish in the boat.

What JPost said +1

I'am a custom knife maker and I don't believe if you sharpen carbon steel you will weaken it unless you can get hot enough by hand to lose it's temper and do you guys really throw a 4$ jig away if the hook gets dull.