Musky bucktails single hook vs treble

[tomkat]

Why is it the only single hooks are on spinnerbaits? I think an inline with a single hook would be nice. More weedless and easier on the fish plus I find single hook spinnerbaits have a great hookup percentage?

[chris.brock]

We were talking pike and mostly spoons, but here's what Jack Penny said on the topic, pretty interesting, I poached this from Mike's forum-

 

 

Good question Chris. I have a couple of thoughts on this. First off, I think you might actually hook more with a treble hook but pike can dislodge a treble a lot easier than a single hook so that's nearly a wash. In other words, I may hook more with the treble but I get more to boatside with the single so who's the winner there? And I do believe that I get more bites with the single hook, no doubt about it in weeds, so in that area, advantage single hook. But you asked about the actual hook up percentage and my thoughts on that are that I think I hook just as many with the single as I do with the treble but there's a small trick I use. Sharp hooks! Most guys I watch don't ever think about this, but I carry a hook hone with me always and in the course of a day I use it at least 30 times, probably more. Pike have a very boney mouth and if hooks are not sharp sometimes they will slide across the boney areas and you won't get hooked up. But with a hook that is hypodermic sharp, any time that hook starts to slide it will normally make contact and penetrate. And so Chris, if you are in a boat, and you have one very sharp single hook on a spoon while your partner is fishing the same spoon sporting a treble that hasn't been sharpened, I can almost guarantee you will land more pike.

Chris, I have to say I admire your position on the pike's welfare. Trebles do harm more fish and do more harm than single hooks. This is the exact reason I started using single hooks. And you state that you don't really care about getting every fish to the boat. That's good because you will never get every single fish to boatside. I have fished with some very high profile fishermen, Lindner, Dahlberg, Maina, Stange, Straw, and others and I can tell you that none of them got every fish to the boat either. That's just part of fishing.

And while we're on this single hook issue, I want to tell you that this is not limited to spoons. I use them on several other lures too. Like hard bodied swimbaits. The Sebile Magic Swimmer is a fantastic pike lure, but sports two trebles. Many times, that rear treble will get lodged in the eye of a fish. I prefer to remove those trebles, add a splitring to the one that's already there (so one hangs below the other) and attach a single hook so that it faces forward. The additional ring allows the hook to be pointed forward but also makes the hook nearly impossible for the fish to throw it. I've also used this trick successfully with Jerkbaits like a Suick and Eddie and Bobbie and Reef Hog.

Good luck out there!

Edited January 30, 2016 by chris.brock

[tomkat]

I think I will see what's in my box that I can switch over to singles and maybe see if handlebarz will make any that way. Be interesting to compare to spinnerbaits .

[Sinker]

Why is it the only single hooks are on spinnerbaits? I think an inline with a single hook would be nice. More weedless and easier on the fish plus I find single hook spinnerbaits have a great hookup percentage?

I often switch out the big trebles for singles on smaller inlines. Way better in the weeds, and if you hook them, you usually got em!

 

S.

[Andy]

Eagletail bucktails have single hooks. Well built lures.

[tomkat]

Those look good I guess they have to be ordered from the states

[singingdog]

Lots of my musky lures have singles, mainly to protect me! I have switched over a fair # of my inlines to singles, and don't notice a difference in hook up percentages. You might get more of the "slashers" with trebles, but they will often be foul-hooked anyway.

 

Funny that he mentions the sebile magic swimmer. I have 2 of those set up with a single siwash on the back, no front treble. They nearly as weedless as a spinnerbait.

[Handlebarz]

Great topic for sure here.

The starting point as to why manufactures use trebles its because most people have it in their head that you must use a treble hook to get better hooking on a fish so as a manufacture we build for the masses as the others will usually swap out hooks and rings no matter what you use as they have their set way. (I have many customers who ask for no rings or hooks as they only use their favorite)

 

Now as for the use of single hook that is interesting I can totally see why it would be better for hooking and also keeping a fish pinned to the hook with a single hook as they usually have a linger shank and the distance from the curve to the point usually is longer then the treble so if the fish is thrashing it will also twist and not get stuck in its mouth where a treble one of the other two points can get caught and help pull the hook free.

 

I know many of the guys that fish for salmon and bows if the spoons come with trebles they switch them out to single right away for hooking and they say it helps keep them hooked up.

 

I think I will be trying this with some of my baits this year I will make a batch and use my 7/0 single and see how it goes.

 

Now another thing about in-lines like we make we only use one treble hook on the back of the bait as we had found 90+% of our fish were all on the back hook heck it might even be more and the ones we had on the middle hook usually looked fouled plus that top hook took away from how our flashabou would dance on the bait with out the top hook. But on our Mammoth baits they are so huge and we use them so slow we had to add a middle hook as we were missing fish then my wife and I were able to watch a large musky come in stalk the bait and Tbone it I right away added the middle hook and started catching musky on them and can say I do not recall catching one on the back hook yet after 4 or more years using them.

[solopaddler]

We were talking pike and mostly spoons, but here's what Jack Penny said on the topic, pretty interesting, I poached this from Mike's forum-

 

 

Good question Chris. I have a couple of thoughts on this. First off, I think you might actually hook more with a treble hook but pike can dislodge a treble a lot easier than a single hook so that's nearly a wash. In other words, I may hook more with the treble but I get more to boatside with the single so who's the winner there? And I do believe that I get more bites with the single hook, no doubt about it in weeds, so in that area, advantage single hook. But you asked about the actual hook up percentage and my thoughts on that are that I think I hook just as many with the single as I do with the treble but there's a small trick I use. Sharp hooks! Most guys I watch don't ever think about this, but I carry a hook hone with me always and in the course of a day I use it at least 30 times, probably more. Pike have a very boney mouth and if hooks are not sharp sometimes they will slide across the boney areas and you won't get hooked up. But with a hook that is hypodermic sharp, any time that hook starts to slide it will normally make contact and penetrate. And so Chris, if you are in a boat, and you have one very sharp single hook on a spoon while your partner is fishing the same spoon sporting a treble that hasn't been sharpened, I can almost guarantee you will land more pike.

Chris, I have to say I admire your position on the pike's welfare. Trebles do harm more fish and do more harm than single hooks. This is the exact reason I started using single hooks. And you state that you don't really care about getting every fish to the boat. That's good because you will never get every single fish to boatside. I have fished with some very high profile fishermen, Lindner, Dahlberg, Maina, Stange, Straw, and others and I can tell you that none of them got every fish to the boat either. That's just part of fishing.

And while we're on this single hook issue, I want to tell you that this is not limited to spoons. I use them on several other lures too. Like hard bodied swimbaits. The Sebile Magic Swimmer is a fantastic pike lure, but sports two trebles. Many times, that rear treble will get lodged in the eye of a fish. I prefer to remove those trebles, add a splitring to the one that's already there (so one hangs below the other) and attach a single hook so that it faces forward. The additional ring allows the hook to be pointed forward but also makes the hook nearly impossible for the fish to throw it. I've also used this trick successfully with Jerkbaits like a Suick and Eddie and Bobbie and Reef Hog.

Good luck out there!

 

Poacher!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jack is incredibly knowledgeable. I'm very fortunate to have him writing for me!

[Andy]

I did order mine from the US. The exchange rate has obviously made these purchases quite expensive. An option would be to check out a Canadian site like luremaking.com. They seem to have all kinds of single hooks in many sizes, even musky sized. Get some single hooks, a couple split rings and you can experiment all you want on lures that you may already have. I have called them in the past and have found them to be very helpful. Plus this gives you something to tinker with during the next month or two. Andy