I kind of do both...

First, the great majority of my steelhead fishing is done with pretty small hooks, 1's, 2's, and 4's, and I pretty much use Owner Cutting Points.

They are awfully sharp out of the box...really, really sharp.

Due to the unique shape of the cutting point, with three sharp edges, I'm afraid that touching them up with a sharpener would do more damage than good.

I use them out of the box, and every time I get hung up, or every ten or fifteen minutes, even if I don't feel that I was hung up, I check the hook. If it's not still really sharp, I replace it.

With all the other money I spend on fishing gear, gas, etc., I don't find burning five bucks worth of hooks in a day of fishing to be cost prohibitive.

Salmon fishing, I generally use either Owner needle points, or Gamakatsu Octopus hooks. Both of those are easy to sharpen, so I sharpen those whenever the need arises.

Fishing for chums, or chinook, or silvers in bigger water, I'm usually using 1/0 or 2/0 hooks, and those are much easy for my egg gooped, hook poked, knife slashed, tooth torn fingers to sharpen.

Now that I think about it, I think there's a bit of a cost/benefit analysis going on...when I'm fishing for chums, and I'm expecting to hook twenty or thirty in a day, I'm not too worried about losing one due to a not so perfect hook point. Same with silvers when they are really in and on the bite.

Steelhead fishing, on the other hand, especially in some of the smaller, lesser known streams I like to fish, one or two fish is the difference between a skunk and a very succesful day, so hooks are checked and changed much more frequently.

It also depends on how I'm fishing. If I'm drifting eggs, then I'm dragging the bottom a lot more, even if I'm not getting hung up more (which I generally am). The hooks get checked and changed a lot more then.

If I'm fishing a float and eggs, if I'm doing it right, then my bait and hook rarely touches anything other than a fish's mouth, so I don't check or change them as often...only after fish and snags. Fishing jigs is the same, if I'm not getting hung up much, then I don't even bother unless I get hung up or hook a fish. Since they can't be replaced without replacing the entire jig, they get sharpened.

On lures, especially spoons, I check the hooks very frequently, and sharpen those a lot. Big single siwashes are about the easiest to sharpen, especially if they are barbless, and harder to easily replace, so they get the business end of the hook sharpener.

Single hooks on plugs are always rigged with point up, so they don't get too beat up. They're easy to sharpen, though, so they get checked every time the rods come in, and sharpened if they need it.

Fish on...

Todd