I am conscious of the cost of things and hate to waste anything. It bothers me to lose or retire a worn out lure. Unfortunately, I am hard on them and often lose one per trip. I go to great lengths to try to recover a stuck lure. I know it is part of fishing. They are easier to deal with than bait. I try to remind myself of how much use I got out of it and how much I spend on other things.

How much does it bother you? Have you found a good way to justify or look at it?

I build them and can replace any of the baits that I loose.

I only retire baits when one of two things happen...

1) They catch me a PB and I have another to replace it

Or

2) It's beat up and proven to catch fish and I want the memories to last

I hate to loose lures. Especially the ones that catch fish! I have found in crank baits that though three or four might look the same.. one of them will catch tons more fish. I don’t know, sound, wobble, something makes it better. I’ll try really hard to recover it from a snag. But no matter what I’m throwing. I’ll try to recover a snagged bait.
But I find lures hanging from the trees and buck brush around Sam Rayburn all the time! I mean Whopper Ploppers, Rattle Traps, lures of all types. I even found a 10XD. Not sure why someone was throwing a 10XD up by a tree. But I’ll recover them and add them to my tackle box.

I target Bluegill and Pan Fish such as crappie and White Bass. The tackle I use is not that expensive and easily replaced.

Not at all because I use plastics that cost almost nothing at times when I might lose one

I've learned the hard way that a lure is much cheaper to be buying than trolling motor props..lol

There are very few of my personal lures that I have retired. However, when I was a kid, I always enjoyed rummaging through my grandfather “Buster’s” tackle box. He is the main person who taught me how to fish. After he passed, I retired all of his lures and displayed them. Some of the lures, like the Hawaiian Wiggler, are dated 1929.

Hate losing one (plastic's not included).

Can be a real PITA retrieving them sometimes.

I take every lost lure situation as a lesson. Why did it snag/break off? How could I have foreseen that? Sometimes it just happens. I like to have a least 2 of everything in the tackle box anyway. I am very particular about my knots, line type, and leader, reel settings, etc. to prevent losses. I try to match the lure to the environment so that the chance of snags is reduced to a minimum. Sometimes stuff just happens.

I hate losing them as well, but on these lakes around Austin between the rocks and the zebra muscles...it's gonna happen. What I hate most is cracking one of my best crankbaits on a dock or bridge piling...that sucks. Did that to my fav Zara Spook at Fork last week. That bait has caught me hundreds of bass.

The most expensive lure in my tackle box is $1 so it doesn’t bother me much

A have a few "retired under honorable conditions" lures that were busted up by the fish in question. Those get hung at the house or office as conversation pieces.

But in general, losing a fishing lure is just part of fishing. Now losing lots of lures in one trip stinks.

Enough that I quit fishing with lures.

If I'm not losing some lures then I am not fishing in the right places