How To Choose The Right Hook For Any Presentation

Although we pay more attention to rods, reels, and lures – they’re not the most important contributor to our success on the water.That would be the hook.If your hook isn’t set up right, dulls, breaks, or is otherwise unserviceable, you can have the best setup and get all the bites in the world – and you’ll still end up empty handed.Here are three tips to manage, select, and rig your hooks to maximize your landing percentages.

1. Choose The Right Hook For Your Plastics

Having too large or small a hook can be a major problem when fishing plastics. Too small a hook and you risk not getting it into a bass’ mouth or not having enough gap to push through the plastic. Too big, and you’ll affect the bait’s action and fall rate. A good rule of thumb is to always use the biggest hook you can easily fit into the main body of the bait – and look for at least a half inch of gap once rigged weedless. There are hundreds of hooks on the market these days, so choosing the right hook for almost any plastic bait shouldn’t be hard.

2. Up-size Trebles When Possible

In order to reduce retail costs, many hard bait manufacturers will release their mass produced hard baits with off-brand treble hooks. Although these hooks catch fish, they’re often not the ideal hooks for that size and style of bait. To increase your landing percentages, up-size the treble hooks on hard baits whenever you can. If the bait comes with size 6 hooks, it will catch more bass with size 4 hooks. As long as they’re not hanging on each other, up-sizing doesn’t usually impact the action of a bait in a negative way. Several hook manufacturers are now making short shank treble hooks, which further increase the size hooks you can add to many baits.

3. Pay Attention to Gauge As Well As Size

Although hook size is important, the thickness and strength of the wire is equally (although less talked about) important. Try to ensure that you are always choosing the right hook with the right thickness for your set-up. If you’re flipping with 65 pound braid, you don’t want to be using a light-wire hook, as it is likely to bend out and cost you fish. In contrast, if you’re drop-shotting with light line, you want to use a narrow, needle point hook that doesn’t require as much pressure to penetrate.