goto hook
fishinAK
2011-02-24 22:57:58
quick survey/question...whats your goto hook for hootchies and spoons? Mustad 95165 is what I have been using and kinda seems like the standard. but recently I have been hearing good things about the tuna hooks. anyone have experience with them? Im just dont like the look of the bent in point.
Salty
2011-02-25 02:04:27
I have used 95165 for years for both spoons and hootchies. It is also known as the "Barker" hook after Chuck Barker.
I mostly use tuna and marlin hooks now because they don't rust and are stronger.
But then I don't catch many kings or coho in the summer and I use bait in the winter.
I continue to use Mustad 95170 for both hootchies and spoons. I have tried some others (including Salty's favorite) but I always went back to the 95170.
Salty
2011-02-25 17:23:28
I also use the 95170 on some spoons and plugs. A few years ago there was a bad batch and I lost numerous kings to them breaking. Kind of soured me. What I don't like about both of these mustad open eye hooks is that crimping them weakens them and then they rust in the eye. So, every year I have to go through and replace all those used hooks on my spoons and hootchies. So, I have gone to closed eye hooks which minimizes this problem.
I love these questions and am happy to offer my opinion with the caveat that there are guys who have it way more figured out than I do. I am sure I learn more than I offer. If the information shared here by me and some others helps you then by all means consider a donation.
Just this week two different people have sent me samples of hooks and lures they were using. My boat is in the midst of major improvements to steering, hydraulics, electrical system, hatches, and gear hauling so I am not fishing. I can hardly wait to get out again and try the new stuff.
In the meantime I am busy working on troll proposals for the Board of Fisheries and the New Facilities Development Committee of NSRAA so I have some fish for those hooks to work on.
Carol W
2011-02-26 05:02:45
One time I was dragging in Shelikoff my partner boat was kicking the crap out of me in the score dept. Now a few years prior I had been to Expo and had just had experienced the bad batch of Mustad hooks that Salty was talking about, so I went to the Mustad booth and told them I made a living with their hook. I then told them that I thought their hook was crap ( in a little stronger terms). Of coarse they knew they were the only game in town and knew I had few choices so there was very little concern as to what I had to say. I wondered through expo and low and behold I came across a very good friend at the Eagle Claw booth, so I stopped and talked to the rep and got samples. Well I ordered #6,#7, and #8 fishing them on hootchies and coho spoons, at first I liked them, for when Mr Lion visited me the hook would straighten out leaving me with my gear and I hardly noticed much issue with big kings straightening them out it seemed like a fine balance to me. I didn't really notice my coho catch changing much however I was dragging a lot of flashers so the hootchies worked fine. Back to Shelikoff I couldn't figure out what the hell my problem was i was dragging the same spoon and our speeds were very comparable and yet he was royally kicking my ass, I changed leaders, I put new spoons on, I paid more attention to the drag, and yet I tore more hair out at check in time.
Finally the trip was up and we both went in to Sitka and I was on his boat when I asked what hook are you using he said #6 95170 mustad, so up to Murray's I trot and buy 2 boxes. On the way back to Shelikoff I took all my hooks off and put new ones on and at check in time the next morning I was right with him. Now I fish 95170 or the 95165 and this year my coho scores were the best they have ever been on the Carol W and I am only using a few flashers to the line. So what I have come up with is that the Eagle Claw was a lighter hook and caused my spoons to spin as opposed to wobble. So that is the hook I use now.
Keep your hand on it
Tom
Like reading these hook recommendations and stories. Over here in Norway, all the gear is just a little different and it is intersting to talk about hooks, gangion line and so forth.
Anyways, thought I would throw out a comment and inquiry. Murrays just got in some blued SS hooks (#7 and #8) and I imagine they are the ones we use on king spoons. Does nayone have any experience with these? They are quite a bit more expensive than the regular blued, but will apparently last a lot longer.
Thanks.
carojae
2011-02-26 18:35:55
Interesting.
@ Salty: Do you use a swivel on your hooks? And if so, I am wondering how you attach it.
@ Tim: This is the first I've heard of these - sounds like the cats meow tho. I wonder if they are light weight like the standard blued hooks.
Thought I'd ask my own question: What do you guys think of the aluminum rings they sell now to put on your spoon so they don't rust? I saw these in Murrays and bought on impulse :? . I use a lot of brass/copper and even gold plate on spoons for Kings and thought maybe these would be better than the black iron rings for saving the finish.
Other than that I use to use the 95195's Mustads but they weaken too much at the bend after a while. I liked the 170's but so did the tackle shop with their prices so I quit buying those (low liner syndrome :D ). Presently, I prefer the 95165 for their extra strong build.
Jim
Salty
2011-02-26 20:30:19
I wrote a long reply on this topic late last night but then deleted it before posting because I thought some would be offended by how much of what little I think I know I shared. Some of you really appreciate the sharing while others are offended that I would share "any secrets". I had one e-mail suggesting my fingers should be cut off so I couldn't type anymore. Someone suggested in an e-mail to me just last week that there should be a "quota" for posts on this site and that some of us had already exceeded it.
One person suggested that my sharing was misleading because sometimes I didn't share the whole story and thus was misleading and could be hurting more than I helped.
So, here is my attitude. I am pretty honest about all my posts but it is true that I often don't share all the details. For two reasons:
1. Often some of the most important details are not mine alone to share: and;
2. Part of the fun of fishing is figuring out your own solutions which are unique to your boat, your fishing grounds, and vary from tide to tide, day to day, season to season. To suggest there is one answer is misleading. Plus, from my perspective it is not the answer that is fulfilling but the quest and the epiphany of figuring it out for that bite, that lure, that tide, that day, that season for yourself or in collaboration with your partners.
It is like Tom trying to figure out the right hook size for the spoons he was using in Shelikof. I was on the drag one time with him there and I never used a spoon the whole trip. The problems we were trying to solve to get bites were completely different. I suspect that even with his spoon and the right hook I would not have caught what he was catching on spoons and he could not have kept up with me if he had tried to fish straight flashers. I don't know what Tom was catching and I am sure he is not interested in what I was doing because while we were both targeting coho, our gear, and our production on that trip was but a subset of a larger picture of how we use gear to put together a season or even a trolling career.
To me, the challenges on that drag were figuring out which hootchie the coho were biting best at different parts of the day, whether it was best to try a generic attractor, or to match up the baby herring they were feeding on. Whether it paid to change the hootchies depending on the light or to stick with a generic combination that worked ok in all light. Whether it paid to switch to one fathom spreads or go to two. When it paid to run 15 spreads a line and when it worked best to only run 4 spreads a line. I hope this detailed explanation of why it is more important to think about the unique solutions that work for you rather than the solution that works for some other troller.
So, swivels? I usually do not use swivels on my hootchies or bugs. If I do use Michael Baits with swivels then I use open eye hooks and crimp them. But I use tougher leader than most that does not crinkle up so easy. In Shelikof for those coho when Tom was there I ended up using a #5 95170 brite stainless on a Michael Bait that matched up with the little herring. I had that particular Michael Bait specially made for me in the Phillipines for chums. It has never really worked for chums but it worked just fine for those coho that trip in the middle of the day.
Aluminum and iron jump rings are used to prevent the dulling of the brite spoon with a stainless hook. Using an iron or blued hook on a brite spoon keeps the spoon brite.
Hope this helps.
At the risk of belaboring a point that has been made before about open-eye salmon hooks - I was complaining to a Mustad rep one troll season about the eyes breaking on their hooks and that "I must have gotten a bad batch of hooks". He said his Company would gladly replace my hooks but wanted to know the details of how I attached them to my gear to be sure I was "doing it correctly". My initial egotistical reaction was - "WTH? I
I liked the aluminum jump rings on my metallic spoons. I find that they keep the surfaces a lot "shinier" during normal use which means less hand-polishing. Given the poor quality of the electro-plated metal surfaces on our contemporary 50/50 spoons - the latter is a consideration if you want them to keep their brand-new shine for as long as possible.
Salty
2011-02-27 02:25:42
Wow, I never had heard about the one squeeze crimp. I will use that from now on. Thanks!
Carol W
2011-02-27 05:07:42
How are the fingers Eric, I had to laugh I can well imagine your e mails. How many posts are you allowed per day? Yeah you were there during that particular trip and yes we both have totally different styles yet if you look at the final outcome our seasons are probably fairly close in a long term. One of the things of trolling is there is not one set method that works all the time. Sometimes my gear is loaded with spoons sometimes with flashers. One of our mutual friends who fishes with you in the dog patch, fishes all flashers all the time I prefer spoons and at the end of the year our final numbers are not that different, so a good piece of advice to a newbie would be to find your style and then perfect it.
Keep your hand on it
Tom
carojae
2011-02-27 05:11:00
Thanks for your replys. Ha ha, I still have a jar of duranickel hooks; a pickle jar full. Every once in a while I ponder puttin' em on.
I too have never heard about the cracks by crimping too many times. In the past, I had a problem with the leader snapping into the eye gap and screwing up the leader - guess I'm guilty of double crimping. Good info.
Salty. Of all the things I know or I think I know, I've come to one unmistakable conclusion and that is this: Show me two consistent highliners and I will show you two different sets of troll gear (or they will). So anyone who thinks there is magic gear out there that only "they" know about, forget about it. I say this with a big grin because it took me years to figure that one out.
I appreciate your thoughts Eric. Fine tuning my gear is something everyone wants to do and I think this forum is a good place to learn how others do it. :D
Now tell me how to keep my cleaning knife razor sharp.
Thanks guys.
Jim
Salty
2011-02-27 07:01:23
It is amazing how sharp your cleaning knife stays round chum fishing.
Salty
2011-02-27 07:03:36
I can only dream of having the kind of seasons you put together Tom.
After I started deckhanding in SE, I had an impression that all fishing tricks were secret and it would only take long hours of lubrication to pry the secrets out of most fishermen, or spoonbucketing someone on the drag. I grew up fishing in the lakes and creeks of Kentucky with my family and never really thought about the sharing thing too much...it was always something that we just did if we were approached by another fishermen with some questions. It was a standard practice that came to be known by my mom as my dad's "bs hobby".
Anyways, I had forgotten about this when I moved up to AK and started fishing for money. On a winter day in Tennessee with my family on a local lake spinning for crappie and trout, my dad, brother and I were being unsuccessful while three burly-looking farm boys just 50 meters down the shore were pullin' em in cast after cast. We wondered what was up, considered some tactics to take over their spot and my dad just did the most astonishing thing I could imagine! He walked over to them and said hi and asked them what they were using! I expected some rough housing possibly, maybe some gesticulating from the farm boys with fists and drop-knees...but again, I was surprised. They took out their bucket of tackle and showed him what they were using!
Well, dad came back after a typical bs session of about 15 minutes and had all their secrets. We switched bait and still could not catch em. After the farm boys packed up and left , we moved over to their spot. However we had already missed the evening bite.
The point, however, is that in my 18 years of freshwater fishing growing up in Kentucky and Tennessee, I learned that most people are willing to share their techniques and tips and those who don't are only fooling themselves. But some things are hard to share like, well, if you are three tough looking farm boys from the south on the hot pot at the right time of day with the right bait. You can certainly tell someone else what you are using and why and where. But the deal is that you are the tough guy (or gal) on the spot at the moment.
Thanks for all the tips on this site and on the docks to all. Afterall, we have to keep ALL of us catching as a fleet, otherwise we all will sink. ( There is money involved and families to feed, but it is fun afterall, right? Life is short, why bother with mean attitudes and secrets. ) And those trawlers will still be out there plowing the fields.
Salty
2011-02-28 18:11:02
Tim,
Wonderful post and your last lines led me to this as surely as a fresh threaded herring draws the big king in.
[attachment=0]Chum Trollers logo.jpg[/attachment]
Here are some figures that illustrate's Tim point about working together or we will lose opportunity.
Trollers are allocated 27-32% of the value of the commercial harvest of South East Alaska enhanced salmon (SEES).
Trollers long term average share of the total, wild and enhanced, value of commercially harvested salmon in SE Alaska was about 29%, thus the 27-32% allocation.
Since the Alaska Board of Fish adopted the allocation in 1994 trollers have averaged 19% of the value of SEES, and in the most recent five year average are still stuck at 19%.
However in recent years trollers have been paying their 3% enhancement tax on 35% of the total value of SE commercially harvested salmon while only harvesting 19% of SEES.
All this information is posted on the NSRAA web site. http://www.nsraa.org/_pdfs/Allocation/Allocation%20Feb%202011%20update.pdf
So, the hook that has been most productive for my trolling business is the political and collaborative hook that both produces these enhanced salmon and improves troll opportunities to harvest them.
Salty
2011-03-01 18:03:53
I just posted a story in the "Destiny" topic in the stories thread that could also go here. Check it out.
Chic Lure
2012-03-15 17:20:42
My goto hooks for the last 15 years or so are N and E nickel sizes 6 and 7. They have huge barbs that hold fish even when going slow, but they straighten out when those fish are grabbed by a sea lion. Too bad they aren't made anymore. My stash is sorely diminished and I say half jokingly I may have to retire...
Salty
2012-04-25 16:09:11
Those N & E were great hooks for scratching kings when few shakers were around.