Here are some things to think about regarding durability of the big lures.

If you bought a 20 dollar rubber swimbait and you caught 3 fish on it before it got so ripped that you couldn't use it, how would you feel?

If you bought a 30 dollar wood hardbait and caught 50 fish on it, but it got the paint scratched up, how would you feel?

If bought a 6 dollar crankbait and you bounced it off a dock and broke it in half, how would you feel?

If you bought a 30 dollar wood hardbait and bounced it off a dock and the bill broke, how would you feel?

If you bought a 20 dollar rubber swimbait and the harness ripped in half and you lost a big bass, how would you feel?

If you bought a Tady 45 surface iron and the fish ate the paint off after 3 trips, how would you feel?

My point is this. No lure is indestricutible, and more importantly, a big fishing lure that weighs a couple ounces, is much more likely to get trashed than a small one.

I have heard of a few Slammers getting the bill broken off when people bounced them off logs, docks and rocks. That suff happens, they aren't made of kryptonite! The diff is that when you crack your 6 dollar crankbait in half, it didn't cost as much money as the Slammer did. I've bounced my bait off of plenty of rocks without ever breaking one, but stuff happens ya know?

I also hear people complain that the paint gets scratched up on their Slammers. To that I would say ... have you ever seen a wood harbait that had a better more durable paint job? I haven't.

There aren't very many wood hardbait manufacturers left in the plug making biz these days, and the difficulties of making these baits is the reason. I mean really, who is left making wood baits? MS, AC and maybe Greg Silks with the Z-Plug ... That's it. No more Generic Trout, no more TNT, and no more Castaic Hardbait (most of which were hard plastic at the end anyway).

I know it hurts when you drop some big money for a lure and something happens to it. It's happened to me more than once. But let's keep things in perspective here ;-)

To the question about repainting with clear coat. I have tried a bunch of stuff and the only one that really kicked butt for me was Aristocrat. It's a two part epoxy, extremely clear and very thick. 2 coats, applied with a brush is good. You have to turn the bait every so often for about an hour while it sets up to keep it from dripping off the lure. Pat Cochran turned me on to this stuff. It's hard to find but it works well. I use it on all my Generic Harbaits. If you search on Google.com you can find some online stores that sell it. You might find it at Home Depot or a hardware store, or you might not. I can't find it in stores anywhere around here. It's pricey but good, and one set of bottles will do a couple dozen baits at least. There are some long discussions about this in the archives of the Trophy Board as well if you search the forum.