Not pre-rigging my soft plastics has worked great, pretty sure I’ve been using the same four weedless hooks all year

Back in January I wrote a really exciting blog post about how I was going to change over to not pre-rigging the various soft plastics such as Gravity Sticks and DoLives that I might carry - see here and night fishing aside where I continue to pre-rig because I only take a few lures and it’s easier in the dark - so I thought I’d report back with how it went………….

Now from a working with Savage Gear point of view I am sure they would prefer it if I had gone through loads of our 6/0 weedless hooks this year, but I can’t recall losing one of these hooks to a snag in 2021 so that means I am pretty damn sure I’ve been using the same four weedless hooks all year whenever I have fished with any of the Gravity Stick soft plastics I might rig on them. You also need to bear in mind that when it comes to swimming soft plastics like these I have also been playing around with some different size weedless hooks because of some different size lures which I can’t talk about yet - but this aside I have of course used these four 6/0 weedless hooks a lot.

A camera phone photo of the four hooks as they are right now

We’re talking about two regular and two belly-weight Savage Gear 6/0 Weedless Corkscrew hooks which I keep in an old chewing gum container in my rucksack. When I think I might need to swim soft plastics because of where I’m going fishing, I load a lure box up with what I reckon I’ll need and not even think about the hooks because I know I always have that chewing gum container in my rucksack with some weedless hooks in it. I do also carry a spare packet of both the regular and belly-weight 6/0 weedless hooks in my rucksack as well - just in case - but so far I haven’t even needed to open the packets up. For sure I have lost my fair share of other lures this year to snags, but I can’t recall snagging up and losing one of the current Gravity Sticks rigged on a 6/0 weedless hook in 2021.

I did initially wonder if it was going to be a complete pain in the backside when I wanted to change the type or colour of lure - but it’s not. I got used to fishing like this very quickly and in no time at all it felt completely natural to unscrew whatever lure might be on the hook and then screw a different one on when I wanted to. I know this might sound like nothing to you, but when you’ve been doing something the same way for ages it can seem a bit weird to change your ways. Now though I wonder why on earth I ended up with so many pre-rigged soft plastics and weedless hooks which then became a dilemma trying to decide which configurations to take out with me. A few hooks together with some Balance Spikes and Glass Rattles and I’m good to go because I can easily fit a decent selection of actual lures in a lure box.

Let’s face it though, weedless hooks are hardly the most expensive items of fishing tackle we might need to buy. I can get the Savage Gear 6/0 Weedless Corkscrew hooks for nothing because of my work with the company, but it’s rather satisfying to still have those original four hooks sitting in my little container and working just fine for me for most of the year. What I do make sure to do when I get back from fishing is remove any of these four weedless hooks from any Gravity Sticks I might have fished with and then rinse the hooks in freshwater just as I would any hard lures or pre-rigged soft plastics like the Sandeel V2 and so on. I’m one of those anglers who does wash their gear down I guess. In the New Year I will most likely go really extravagant and swap these four weedless hooks over for four brand new ones, but in reality I don’t actually need to. Note that I do regularly sharpen these hooks because surely we always want the best possible chance of the hooks going in?

And if it’s any help, those little stopper things on the weedless hooks further up the post are thanks to a lad I know in Cornwall who put me onto them. He kindly left a comment on a post the other day so I have copied and pasted it here: “you have what I guess is one half of one of the Clear Rubber Egg Bait Stoppers on your SG Weighted Hook. I've been using these for a while now available from Dan @ NineSeven Tungsten, on all my hooks when fishing Soft Plastics and find them excellent. I put a 2 or 3mm drill through the centre of the Rubber Egg, depending on the thickness of the hook I'm sliding them onto and then cut them in half, it might sound a bit of a faff but they do stop the SP from sliding down the hook, resulting in more fish caught. Using Stoppers can also prolong the life of the SP”.

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