Favorite Brand of Hooks?

[Hairstacker]

Mike, great point about barbless. In that regard, I don't believe anyone comes close to competing with Tiemco when it comes to the number of hook models offered in barbless. For this reason alone, I've been converting my trout hook inventory pretty much entirely to TMC hooks.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

I agree that all hooks should be barbless for several reasons.

I can't believe the industry has not gone that way completely by now.

I was converted in 1975 by Bob Giannoni. It was not hard.

I get mad at myself now when I am fishing with the grandkids and we get a fish hooked with a barb up.

I particually don't like using lures with the grandkids that have 3 trebble hooks with 9 barbs total. It is down right dangerous.

[Adam Grace]

I agree Bill.

Before fly fishing I used to use tons of bass lures with treble hoks with barbs. I hated how those hooks were extremely difficult to remove most of the time. I became very used to using the treble hooks after tons of time fishing. Now after fly fishing for many years with single barbless hooks I get very nervous when I try to remove any treble hooks, during the rare times I use connventional tackle.

I crimp the barbs down on 97% of my flies. I usually leave them on large dries that I attach a dropper to the hook. The barb keeps the mono from slipping off of my dry fly hook.

I prefer single barbless!

[Darian]

For a long time now, I've been removing the the trebles from the lures I use and replacing them with single, Open Eye Siwash hooks... .

Haven't had any trouble with hooking or removal from a fishes anatomy... . I highly recommend it... .

[SullyTM]

Barbless for sure...Had to pull a hook out of my thumb last night And I wasn't even fishing. The barb was smashed so it was an easy pull out...painful, but easy

[Adam Grace]

Sully, that may be the best aspect about barbless hooks, easy removal from your own body!

I totally agree!

[kbarton]

I like most of the major brands, I use Tiemco/Mustad for most of the commercial flies, and save the Partridge hooks for my own bugs.

THe Model Perfect bend on some of the Partridge dry and nymph hooks does not work well when the barb is pinched down - these hooks have such a short point that the fish slide off quite easily.... I want to say these were labeled with the "Capt. Hamilton" style, but as they are not in front of me, I could be quite wrong.

Hal Janssen used to market these same styles years ago, short point, model perfect bend, I think they were a medium wire wet/steelhead hook for him...

[steve sullivan]

Hi Paul,..... I haven't had enough experience with the Targus hooks to form an opinion yet.... The guys at Kiene's seem to think they're OK, tho . I'm going to Montana this fall and anticpate using dry flies on Targus hooks (....nothing small ).

Will be able to give you a better opinion then.... .

From what I have been told that those that are in the know in the bead and hook business is that targus gets their hooks 2457 hooks from the same place that tiemco gets them, and they are the same hook. IE the company scoops out 50,000 hooks from a bin and sends them to tiemco and then scopes out 50,000 hooks from the same bin and sends them to targus (actually I think maruto to be precise).

I have maruto size 14's that I got for $6 for a 100 pack and I dare anyone to try to tell the difference between it and a 2457 size 14