If you have looked at some of the hard baits in the lure selector you may have noticed the hooks are different. This is because I decided that for the most part I would rather fish these lures with single hooks attached rather than use them with the treble hooks that they come with. Most people don’t choose to do this and there are probably some other people out there that never considered this an option so I thought I’d take a minute to explain how and why I do this.
Let’s cover they why first. I’m not here to try and give you or anyone else that reads any of the articles on my site an unsolicited lecture in ethics. I’m grateful for anyone and everyone that decides to look through my site and the last thing this world needs right now is more negativity. Even if you practice catch and release 100% of the time there are some cases where fish are going to get injured or die. Having said that, there are a few reasons why I’ve personally decided to use single hooks most of the time:
- Generally speaking, single hooks are less damaging to bass if you are practicing catch and release.
- They can also be less damaging to the angler, and as an example I watched two of the anglers I follow on social media hook themselves with a treble hook in the last couple of weeks. I personally fish in a kayak a lot of the time and don’t necessarily love the idea of doing that to myself out in the middle of nowhere.
- Single hooks can also come through grass a little better than treble hooks, and there’s a lot of grass in most of the spots that I fish.
- I’ve found it’s also easier to get a single hook out of a fish than a treble hook if you happen to hook one in the gills or the gut.
The main downside to doing this is that you are probably going to lose some fish. I actually haven’t noticed much of a difference when the fish actually go for the lure completely, but if you are throwing something like a popper where they might just slap at it without completely committing then you will most likely not land as many fish. As a result, I would not necessarily swap out the treble hooks on my hard baits if I were fishing in a tournament or any sort of situation where the amount of fish I caught actually mattered, but aside from those situations I have been using single hooks for a while and have been happy with the results.
Now that I’ve covered they ‘why’ let’s get into the how. If you decide you want to give this a try the first thing you are going to need to do is figure out which hooks you want to use. Owner is one of my favorite brands when it comes to hooks so this part was easy for me and I’ve personally been using their Single Replacement Hook X Strong hooks. These hooks come in several sizes, but for the most part I use the size 1 and 2/0 hooks and if you are interested you can find a chart that will show you which size to use here.
There are a few things you will want to keep in mind if / when you decide to give this a try. The first thing I will mention is you will want to use hard baits that have two hooks and generally speaking I prefer to avoid using ones that have three or more treble hooks. That’s not to say you couldn’t do that, but in my case I like to have one hook facing forward and the other one facing backwards. You will also need to purchase a set of split ring pliers. I got mine at walmart and they were not expensive and have lasted me a long time, but you could spend a little more money and get a nicer set than the ones I’ve been using if you wanted to. You will also want to pay attention to that little metal loop connecting the lure to the split ring. That needs to be inline with the lure and some lures have on that is perpendicular to the lure which won’t work with single hooks. Another thing I’ll mention is the overall weight of the lure with the hooks. Lure manufacturers usually (hopefully) spend a lot of time thinking about this topic and so you will want to make sure the hook you go with enables the bait to perform the way the manufacturer intended it to perform and since single hooks only have one hook on them (instead of three) I’ve found that it helps to go with a single hook that is slightly larger than the treble hook it’s replacing. For example, here’s a picture I took of an Evergreen SH-3:
If you were to compare the hook size of these hooks to the treble hooks that come with this lure you would find that the front one is just about the same size and the back one is bigger. Normally I’d go with bigger hooks for both, but another thing I like to do is downsize the front hook a bit if I’m throwing a lure with a front hook that can get caught up on the lure itself or the line. In this case a squarebill crankbait is one of my favorite lures to throw but, it’s also one where I’ve had this happen so I decided to try this out a while ago and have been very happy with the results. The morale of the story is there’s no specific rules to this and ultimately you can (and should) go with whatever works best for you.
Ironically a squarebill is not one of the lures where I’ve noticed a lower hookup ratio. Bass usually hit the hell out of this thing if they are going to hit it. I’ve also not noticed any difference in the hookup ratio with the other crankbaits that I use. I have noticed a bit of a difference with some topwater lures, but even then I personally feel like the pros outweigh the cons and so I’ve been doing this with all of the lures that are currently mentioned on this site and normally ship with treble hooks.
One last thing I will bring up is expensive swimbaits. A lot of these ship with treble hooks and honestly if you are going to pay $30 or more for a single swimbait then I’d probably shy away from swapping the hooks out on it with single hooks. I personally don’t throw them very often anyway so it isn’t really an issue for me, but that’s another case where the lure manufacturer probably put a fair amount of thought into the hook that ships with the lure, and in those cases it’s probably best to just go with the hooks that the lure comes with. Aside from that, if you are considering using single hooks instead of treble hooks I’m personally a fan of doing so, and would recommend at least giving it a try. Worst case scenario is you don’t like it and if that’s the case you can just go back to using treble hooks.
