[bassrecord]

David, This is good information. I had not realized that Mustad hooks made in different places would have different quality. My guess is that their quality would be roughly the same for the identical hook.

You said, "If you wanted to compare various hooks and see how good they are I would compare them against equivalent Owner hooks. By general common consensus they seem to be one of the best hooks on the market and just about all comments and reports I have ever seen on them have been totally positive with very very few negative comments or reports of failures."

Yes Owner has a good reputation and Eagle Claw had bad reputation, but I want to test for myself. Let's say 30 Owners for a given model/size broke at 75 ft-pounds average and the equilivalent 30 Eagle Claw model/size broke on average at 74 foot-pounds, if Owner cost 3 times as much, I would go with Eagle Claw. But I'd be interested in the weakest hook out of the 30 sample too or some breaking all over the range. If they cost the same, and behaved the same, to me it would be a push.

I'd be interested in reading your SS report. To my thinking comparing SS hooks to high carbon steel hooks is almost like comparing apples to oranges, but there may be some overlap.

John