I do love a good hard lure, but I do feel extra confident with soft plastics and that bigger, single hook
As much as I love a bass off the top, I don’t obsess it like a lot of anglers (quite rightly) do. It’s obviously a very exciting way to catch our bass, but I am not going to fish surface lures all the time just for the buzz if I think that something else might work better. I also accept that the crux of fishing is sticking hooks in the mouths of fish for our enjoyment - it is, we can’t ignore this fact - but I do find myself often shying away from using lures with treble hooks…………..
When I went to Canada last year, the regulations were that you can only use barbless single hooks for the striped bass. I really like this - take away the element of choice and just get on with it. At times there we so many fish around it didn’t really matter if you missed the odd fish, but even in our fish-fever moments, I don’t recall ever thinking that a pair of those very good Mustad Kaiju single hooks in size 4/0 (with the barbs crushed) on a surface lure like the long-casting 120mm 20g Berkley DEX Strider wasn’t working highly effectively. It worked awesome in fact.
I am very happy to use the size 3/0 Mustad Kaiju single hooks when I turn to the Savage Gear Seekers or Surf Seekers in say the 23g, 28g, 30g, 35g or 40g sizes for our own bass. The masses of bass fishing I have done with single hooks on various surface and sub-surface hard lures caught me plenty of fish, but it also left me somewhat doubtful as to their unqualified success rates. My more recent feelings are that you need to use the biggest single hook you think you can get away with and then you stand a much better chance of hanging on to our bass when you fish with hard lures rigged like this.
I know that treble hooks are a necessary evil as such, but I just don’t like them very much. I don’t like them when I am trying to unhook a bass which might be twisting around, I don’t like how they are so indiscriminate with where they end up in the mouth or face or eyes or throat or gills of a fish, I don’t think they are as effective at hooking bass up and keeping them on as a big single hook, I seriously dislike treble hooks at night especially, and really good treble hooks are not at all cheap. If I am to use a few specific hard lures which I happen to really like, I know for example that they simply do not swim quite right if I swap the trebles for singles. I still think the IMA Komomo SF-125 is one of the best shallow-diving hard lures for example, but in my experience it needs the three treble hooks to swim correctly. I can’t be without the IMA Hound 125F Glide and for me it works perfectly with the middle treble removed. I love the long-casting and shallow-diving Savage Gear Gravity Shallow lures, and when they were coming to life I was able to push for only two treble hooks instead of three on the larger 11.5cm 20g size.
I am not trying in any way to tell you to stop using treble hooks by the way! I use them sometimes and I will continue to do so when required. I would urge you to crush all barbs on any treble or single hooks though, but again, that is completely your choice. And so it should be, even if I personally just can’t see the need for a barb on any hook we would use for our bass fishing. That’s me though, and it might well not be your thing. More and more people seem to want to tell other people what to do and what to think these days, so what happened to merely proffering a considered opinion and NOT getting all riled up when somebody doesn’t agree with us? The hippy thing never did it for me at all, but I do think that a bit more peace and love would go a long way these days!
A Savage Gear Craft Bleak 12cm 11.8g rigged on a BKK Titan Rider Worm Hook 5/0 with some tungsten putty as the belly-weight
What I do feel supremely confident using for our bass fishing though is soft plastics with a relatively big single hook in them. Whether that single hook be a regular J-hook or a weedless/Texas/offset hook, I don’t really care - it’s the single hookpoint on a bigger hook that fills me with confidence when I am bass fishing. Both from connecting with the bass point of view, and also from keeping the bass hooked up all the way in. We will never hook every hit we get, and some fish are always going to come off. It is my belief that my hookup ratios are better with the bigger (single) hooks in soft plastics, and also my fish retention rates. I can’t prove any of this by the way so it’s just a feeling, but isn’t confidence a massive part of our fishing?
Anybody starting to feel more confident about the England rugby team again? The kiss of death I know, but I am hoping it will be a good win against Fiji tomorrow and then a monster game against the All Blacks next weekend. The game of this weekend has to be France v South Africa tomorrow evening though. Does sport get any more physical than that clash promises to be? You all have a good weekend and may a few lovely bass smash your lures if you are out and about…………..
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