David Reid

Thanks everybody what an opinionated bunch of people you have just confused me more. No seriously Thanks everybody that has contributed to this thread you have all added to my knowledge about a style of fishing I knew and know very little about and had not even heard of before the start of this year. I can see why this style of fishing has quickly become so popular and that each of you have developed your own unique little tricks and things you do that make it successful for you individually. Without knowing about this tube/ring idea its a method I would have tried again and probably given up as I continued to lose bait after bait as they were pulled off the hook one after another. Also thanks Jim for sharing your knowledge and the details plus picture on that Wacky bait of yours I learnt a lot out of that and am definitely going to have to try some of these things plus this style properly now. I dont know how well it will go with some of our saltwater fish but imagine with a little trial and error it will work quite well. Again thanks everbody.

Yes you are right about the tube ruining the tail action, I hadnt thought about that. I suspect your right about the KISS aspect too. Heres me just trying to complicate it. I certainly like the idea of sticking one hook of the treble into the bait though. Not only does it beat a flailing treble thrashing around hands down but the bait would certainly certainly run straighter and the movement of the tail will give you all the action you want.

I would suggest you specialise and concentrate on one aspect such as the Hard Baits or whatever you choose for a start off rather than jumping around all over the place. Get a little experience and knowledge there and it will stand you in good stead. I am concentrating on soft baits but absorbing from lots of other avenues and areas at the same time all of which I find interesting. If you are interested in Hard Baits and want to see what is possible have a look at this review: http://www.tackletour.com/reviewbettencourtbaitsrfbluegill.html which is made by one of the members here I believe and you will see you are in good company. I have never fished with wooden plugs like this but can appreciate all that goes into it. Good luck with your efforts.

Welcome JB. I am not into Hard Baits but like looking at them and seeing what people are producing. You certainly chose the right site and there are some very talented people here. Good luck with your quest and your hobby and if you get stuck ask or search there are plenty of people who can help and there is heaps of archived info and details. I have already learnt a lot.

Jim, Thanks.That sounds good as with the ball you would have plenty of meat for the hook to go through and so it wouldnt split your bait into two halves so easy but tend to slide up your line as you suggest. Here I know the Shiner hook as a Kahle hook. Here is what the Gammakatsu site here says about them: This is another favourite hook pattern favoured by surfcasters and boat anglers. This clever wide-gape design with hook point aimed back at the shank provides then angler with another "self-hooking" hook. The wide gape is perfect for shellfish baits and cut baits because of the curved length of its shank. Thin wire gauge, these kirbed Shiner hooks are deceptively strong and feature a straight eye and are black only. They are available in sizes 1/0, 2/0, 3/0, 4/0, 5/0, & 6/0 and in small packs. Take it the ones you are using have a straight eye similar to the standard Octopus hook rather than the offset eye of the Octopus Circle hook. They did a lot of research here and found the best hook for longlining as used by commercial fishermen were by far the Octopus Circle hooks as they ended up with the majority lip and mouth hooked as opposed to gut hooked which occurred much more with the straight eye straight shank hooks. As the lines were in the water often for quite a time as well before they were hauled out they found this minimised the amount of drownings and mauled and eaten fish as well. Its not important here as we are dealing with recreational fishing but I applaud anything that can minimise the suffering to/of a hooked fish. Thanks for the help and advice I will certainly try something like this at some stage. What size fish have you caught with the 6" version and what size hooks are you using with these? Betwen you and Bssmstr you have got me a lot more interested in this style of fishing and I will most definitely be trying it more.

Bssmstr et Al, I was wondering about this Wacky rigging as you have suggested and was thinking you could Trap-Rig these sticks or worms with a hook in each end of the stick/worms as well. If you ran your braid through the middle with your needle bringing it to the outside surface near the middle and tied off the hooks first you could then pick up the braid with your hook giving it a couple of turns to take up the slack in the braid and so it dosnt slide so easily on the third hook and then by tipping the hook on its side slip the plastic tubing loop over the hook and move it along a bit to roughly centre it or whatever and align it where the braid comes out of the worm. Sounds very effective to me and I am sure it would be deadly with most strikes retrieved slowly or trolled. You would also end up with 2 fish at times or the bigger fish that took the whole bait I imagine. A lot of fun anyway and I imagine a very effective way to fish. Try it and let us have your feedback.

How are you rigging this bait Jim? #1 is a very small hook even just slightly smaller than a 1/0 so I take it the fish you are targeting are bass and other freshwater rather than saltwater. Whats the biggest fish you would catch with that bait? The smallest I use are generally 2/0 with 3/0 and 4/0 up to 8/0 depending on what I am targeting and size. I dont use hooks below 2/0 and most of the time if I use 2/0s they are with smaller soft baits or use as a keeper hook. Here we have strict minimum size (length = from snout to inside fork of tail "V") and maximum daily limits nowadays for each species to ensure sustainability eg Kingfish are 75 cm (= 29.5") with a maximum of 3 and Snapper are 27 cm (= 10.63") with a maximum of 9 in the region I live in and 10 elsewhere. If I was to use hooks below these sizes I would hook and damage too many undersized fish.

You obviously dont need too much as most leader material and most breaking strains will fit within 1/16in tube as you mention. You could even fit most of the steel traces within that. The stuff I mentioned and was thinking about has a 2.5mm ID = 1/10 or 0.10". Just wondering if that would be too sloppy and cause any problems or need pegging. Trial and error I suppose. Unpegged it might even allow the bait to slide up the line and out of the way so less damage. Take it you use either a split ring or a swivel just before the hook. I suspect a split ring is better myself as I often like a swivel and preferably a ball bearing swivel 2 M or so up the line. Others may be different of course. Any chance of puting a small indentation in the bait at the lower exit point of the tube so the split ring is half buried and the hook shank is flush with the body at this point. Something else you could also do is put a tube in to the tail for trap rigging these things.

Yeah: http://www.tackleunderground.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=2044&d=1178554127 but I still dont know what size the tube is and wall thickness.

Thanks Bssmstr. It was only when I came across Wacky rigging which I had never seen or come across before that I realised that was probably the way to fish some of these sticks and bigger worms for some of the saltwater fish we target here. A friend of mine who I got interested in soft baits bought a pkt tried to fish them like bait threading them on the hook didnt catch a thing and then came back to me saying How do you fish them I caught nothing and darn near got tipped out of the kayak by a big fish that grabbed the bait didnt get hooked but took off. He was most depressed but even more so when I said I am sorry I just dont know. It was when soft bait fishing here was just starting here and none of us knew much which wasnt all that long back. What size worms or sticks can you actually fish this way and what really is the optimum size for these? It all comes down to what size fish you are targeting I suppose but then again there is probably an ideal size bait and target fish for this style of fishing I suppose. I have hardly tried this method but must try it more. That tubing sounds a good idea and have not tried that O rings or split rings either. The couple of times I did try it with these worms I wasnt Wacky rigging and the worms were quickly munted by being pulled off or being chomped up to the hook by pickers so havnt really tried it again. Its certainly a darn good way for youngsters to fish I imagine. Prior to this I was thinking it would probably be a good idea to put a length of mono in the stick mold to act as reinforcing but that is certainly a good idea alright and with the bait not so quickly being ripped in half with the hook through it I certainly will try it.

I am not following you here. Do you mean you slide the 1/8" tubing ring onto the stick which secures it and holds it in place with the 2 halves trailing back in the water and you then slip the hook through the tubing ring so it is not through the body of the stick but just through the tubing ring which is then positioned on the bend of the hook?

Have you got a pic of it and can you Mic it if poss please. Yeah I hear what you say about reinventing the wheel we all do it at times and me as much as anyone at times. Mind you computers over the last 12 years and Google and Wikipedia have saved me tremendously. When I was younger it took me quite a lot of time to learn someone else has always invented it and often got round things better than what you do yourself unless you give it a lot of thought and time. Yeah I thought this vinyl tubing might be alright and I have got 200 M of it here less about the 0.7 M I have used.

Thanks Del, I get the message re Teflon slipping which I certainly imagine it will without grooves, burrs, or something to hold it there. It also needs to be cut at right angles too and I know from experience its easy to run off when cutting a number of pieces. Apart from that it would be excellent. What do you think of what I suggested about using Vinyl tubing? That would melt enough to start becoming integral with the bait to hold and secure I imagine. Would it be strong enough or too flexible I suppose is then the question? The stuff I have has a 0.9mm wall thickness and is reasonably rigid. I suppose the only way to find out is to try it.

BM, Melting point of Teflon is around 250c off memory and goes up to 280 C for the really good stuff (= 482 F & 536 F respectively) but often it melts around 230 C (= 446 F) so none of it should cause problems as you say. What is the actual melting point of Vinyl tubing do you know? Was wondering if you could use that with a solid teflon insert or similar you later could pull out and reuse. The melted plastic when poured is not going to be above 350 F (=177 C) so even if it tends to melt the Vinyl tubing it shouldnt melt or distort the teflon too much and hopefully should be removable. Anyone tried this? If so does it work or is the teflon too hard to remove? I have some luminous tubing that has a 2.5mm ID x 4.3mm OD ie. 0.9mm wall thickness I wouldnt mind trying out. Any comments or a No No before I try it?

Saint, Even better proportionally and they are still nice small files. I like the way you have cropped virtually all the irrelevant background away. I agree with Nova but any of these would contrast and work well against a sandy muddy bottom such as you get in an estaury I was thinking.

John & Vm, Have hardly hard a chance to look at this this week and am about 2 pages or so behind you both, havnt even read the dialogue yet merely glanced at it. Without thinking about it or giving it a lot of thought I suspect the best way to hold the hook and put pressure on it may be to secure it through the hook eye maybe with something like a shakle with a pin through the eye and then with a cone/funnel shape section over the hook point allowing slight movement (sideways or whatever so the stress goes on the weakest section of the hook rather than a predetermined location) applying the pressure. If the cone is also open at its smallest/tightest restriction this will allow the finest point to poke through and the hook to be self setting if you follow me. To accommodate quite a range of hooks it may need various size shakles and cones. Anyway just my 2c and something for you both to think about maybe in the meantime. Alternatively you could use 2 shakles the smaller one securing the eye and the appropriate shakle pin of the 2nd shakle allowing the bend to roll around the contour of the pin as the pressure is applied allowing the hook to straighten and/or break at the appropriate location.

Looks good Saint. I really like your pictures they download really easy and get the idea across real quick. Zap and they are here. I really like that you have kept them small in size and file size as a result.

John re your query I am hardly getting a chance at present to go fishing although I would love to say stuff everyone and to go and do so. It is generally the opportunity cost that is the problem.Most of it is choice as fishing tends to soak up money and I am concentrating on saving and investing in my business at present as I have a tosser here who has stolen just about everything I own. I feel like killing the guy but it is not the answer obviously as it would only get me locked up for a number of years. I dont really want to bludge hooks and that wasnt the purpose of what and why I said what I said. I just felt it may be a suitable way to test some hooks if necessary. Kingfish certainly have a way of straightening out and testing hooks like no other fish I have seen. They often hit like a freight train and take off so you often have to reset the drag on the fly. If you dont you can quickly get to the end of the line at around 300/350 M and have a bustoff. When you get one on the line you generally know it. Some fish you hook one and you often reel them in and they dont put up much of a fight. With Kingfish this is never the case even the rats put up stiff resistance and a good fight. Re size I mostly use Mustad and also VMC and the occassional Gammy at times. Also the ocassional Owner at times but they are miles too dear here. All are good hooks and dont give too many problems. Traditionally we use bait or a live bait like kahawai (a form of native salmon really = Arripis trutta) or yellowtail (jack mackeral = Trachurus declivis, New Zealand Jack Mackerel T. novaezelandiae) but more and more of us are switching to soft plastics and using a good quality hook or jighead is increasingly becoming important. I prefer hooks to jigheads myself. You really learn if you lose a decent fish through poor quality how important hook quality really is. I normally use hooks from 4/0 up to 8/0 and I know others use 10/0 at times for the bigger fish. I tend to use smaller rather than bigger hooks as that way my strike rate is better unlike some people who prefer the bigger hooks. Probably I have proportionally more bustoffs as a result (but thats probably my poor fishing ability maybe). Yes corrosion is a problem as its always a marine enviroment. I certainly wouldnt mind finding a decent SS hook. Proportionally for the same size they are stronger. As far as testing anything like this I have a friend who is semi retired fishes as much as he can and more or less targets Kingfish the whole time now using soft plastics. He has been using soft plastics for Kingfish for around 15 to 16 months now (it may be a bit longer) but he sent me up an email recently saying he had just caught number 43 which for Kingfish is a very high figure. He is a really excellent fisherman and mostly is a Catch and Release fisherman which I thoroughly applaud as he is not stripping the resource that way. At Easter when I spoke to him and he was around No 38 he told me he had only kept 7 or 8 and most of those were given to groups of people for presents for feasts family celebrations etc. At present I am working on developing totally biodegradeable baits which I intend to manufacture here in addition to the plastisol ones and I feel for sustainability in the longrun are important. In many ways we really do live in Paradise here and I would hate to get 10 or 20 years down the track and looking back see the damage and impact upon the enviroment I had caused if I was to just pursue the plastisol path. It is a longterm goal but eventually I will get there. If anyone does come across a really suitable hook I am certainly interested in trying and testing them and my friend is certainly the right guy at the same time. (certainly a lot better fisherman than myself). John, Vodkaman and others like I said keep going in the end if we do nothing else it helps keep the hook manufacturers honest. You have certainly put a lot of work into that Vodkaman and I applaud your effort (I have yet to read it thoroughly mind you).

Pete, Yes I realise. Shortly when I get round to getting my spectrophotometer back I will do so. Its the only really true way of getting true colour I know. None of these programs you can download off the net actually do it.(that I have seen anyway). They are pretty close but not close enough. I was involved with a bit of high quality printing for a while and this was specifically designed so you could get accurate reproduceable colour virtually everytime. That certainly set the most accurate colours I have seen. I have run a number of those programs including MSs and then gone through with the spectrophotometer and they all varied when there was a number of monitors. With this you could set 20 in a row and the colour would all be picture perfect on every monitor with no variation until one monitor shifted which suprisingly often only takes a week or two as phosphors change which is determined by the age of the monitors and the phosphors used. No two monitors are ever the same although the human eye and brain tells us they are but this got them to as close a match as anything out there. Also no two humans see exactly the same colour. I had this clearly demonstrated to me years ago when I went up to Everest Base Camp tramping and I could clearly see in vivid colour many hundreds of yards away what most people couldnt and could only see hazily. I am an exception to the rule as I have been both longsighted and shortsighted in my life. Most people are one or the other which gets more accentuated as they age. The quality of monitors has certainly changed too and has gone downhill as they have got cheaper. Quality monitors like Sony, Phillips, Viewsonic etc are the exception today not the rule so its also not suprising each of us see and perceive colours a little differently as well. Plus the quality of Chinese glass was never high originally where a lot of the monitors are made today until they started manufacturing solar tube solar heating and they bought good Canadian and German technology which immediately improved their glass clarity and actual light transmission. Sorry people if I appear to be hijacking this thread as I its supposed to be about colour formulas but I also believe this is important and I am just trying to explain to Rocky. I suppose whats really important is wether the colour you use really catches fish and how much variations change that factor. At the end its not just the colour of the bait which is important but the water colour, clarity, composition, background, latitude, sunshine, and season etc which affect it as well.

Randy, You have to watch this Nova you know he almost had me convinced that brown was black recently. No seriously something that we were discussing was showing up as brown on my screen and with his experience he was probably right. I still havnt figured it out yet and will try what we were discussing eventually to see wether he was right. Thanks for this sand colour Nova, must try it. I suspect it might work alright with flounder on a sandy muddy bottom so will try that as well and also your green smoke. Randy I have been reasonably impressed with some of Novas colours I have seen and will eventually play around with them a bit but I also believe he is right when he says you need to develop your own unique/individual colours.

Smirkplug, You should be doing alright as a a roofer, roofers make good money. I used to do it myself when I came back here and I had a hefty mortgage on my first house. Heck a man like yourself should be able to buy one of those $10,000 units and donate it to TU members to use and test hooks and keep these hook companies honest. I use to advertise under the name R & R Plumbing as a sideline. People would ring up and say whats the R & R stand for btw and I would tell them Rough & Ready. You would be amazed at how many humourless people there are out there at times. It certainly sorted the punters out quickly. I was amazed at how quickly once I did a job I got repeat work and often months later the same people would put someone else on to me. The trouble with a lot of us is we believe its always greener elsewhere when often it is right under our nose if we learn to look and often use a bit of lateral thinking. Eg. I imagine there was a lot of work in New Orleans and still is fixing and renewing roofs but the chances of being paid these days wouldnt be too bright would they? Thats the good thing about roofing as long as you have a Romalpa clause in your contract you dont get jerked around. You only have to threaten to remove the roof and people normally pay up when they realise you are serious. I only ever had one problem with being paid and that was with a friend who was trying to use me to finance a venture of his down country without asking me. I got my lawyer to send him a letter and once he realised I meant it and was serious he paid up like a lamb. I suspect there would have been some very wet patrons and guests of that hotel otherwise. Heck I wouldnt like to do the same thing with soft baits you would be likely to end up with a load of real smelly fish on your doorstep as payment as a result and possibly a load of hooks that had been tested on this tester for good measure. With a bit of thought and contributions from others as well yet I am sure between us all We should be able to come up with quite a good tester. That is certainly the one thing I like about this group there is certainly a heap of good people who will throw in their 2c or give you good advice. Thanks Vodkaman for your input. Anyone thought of using a load-cell? Although it might be expensive you could certainly come up with a nice compact unit that would do the trick.

Vodkaman, Good effort I will look at it later and add my 2c worth. Re Safety Glasses Excellent Advice. Like they say Hindsight is Perfect. You have obviously been a parent or are a parent. Havnt time to read it at present but will get to it. John and others when you have found some really good hooks send them down to me for infield testing. Our Kingfish are notorious for straightening hooks out and breaking them as well and grow to over 100 lbs here where we hold most of the world records for them. In the States you have even changed the name and call them Yellowtail so you can have your own records. On the West Coast and California generally they are lucky to reach 60 lbs generally although you do get them at 80 lb. Its probably all those darn Japanese and darn Hawaians catching all the big ones I suppose. (sorry folks I am not being racist just commenting on people that catch fish which have my name on them but someone else pulls out of the water). Unfortunately that happens when you have large populations. Such is life unfortunately. These are certainly the ultimate testing machine and even the undersized rats give some hooks a hammering. When you hook one of these and if they dont bust you off on foul or piles or whatever you often have a 20 minute and sometimes over half an hour battle to ensure you land it. I am sure you have similar fish in the States. From that point of view John you are on the right track and anything that helps an angler land a prize fish is possibly a good thing (although that means I can no longer catch that fish). Most of the well known brand names of hooks such as Mustad, Owner, VMC, Gammakatzu etc and even Eagle Claw who have upped their act do a good job and put out reasonable hooks but anything that can encourage them to improve their act put out better more reliable hooks and keep them honest is a good thing in my opinion.

Dont know Durhams but this is probably the company and can supply what you want I imagine: http://www.waterputty.com/

Here is a bit more info on SSs: http://www.steelforge.com/ferrous/stainlesssteel.htm Apparently they use the 400 series for SS hooks. Read under Ferritic and also under Martensitic. Also note where they say: "the use of argon-oxygen decarburization and vacuum-induction melting has produced several new ferritic grades including 18Cr-2Mo, 26Cr-1Mo, 29Cr-4Mo, and 29Cr-4Mo-2Ni." (= thermal lances where it says argon-oxygen). it is interesting where they say: "In the annealed condition, strength of these grades is approximately 50% higher than that of carbon steels." I cant comment on 400 series as my experience has mostly been with 304 and 316 and a very little 320 and none with 400 but I imagine it would serve the purpose admirably.