Because this might seem like a boring topic to start, I’m gunna get fired up out of the gate to stop the yawn now. This sport is at it’s peak of gimmicky shit that is on the market. I ran into a euro nymph bro that looked like a military scuba diver on a river last year that had a fish counter hanging off of 1 of no less than 10 zingers attached to his jet pack-chest pack device. I see people writing “rod reviews” as if a certain 9ft 5wt is going to determine whether that person sucks, is decent, or legitimately good when they get to the river and use it. I see dudes walking like they got raped in jail waddling streamside because they are trying to fit a euro rod and a fly rod with real fly line into a single day and one of them is in some weird wading rod holder and down their waders. It doesn’t make sense to me why you are willing to walk around like an open-minded penguin streamside to cover your bases, but also at the same time not care if the hook you have tied to your line is comprised of low grade Chinese metal comparable to a paperclip. So, let’s talk about it.
To start, I will say that I did not originally notice the issue of bad hooks on shop flies to start in this sport. Until the early 2000’s, I felt like the hooks I had on flies I bought at shops were real hooks and they didn’t bend. It became apparent to me at some point in time though, a long time ago, that shop flies were no good. I can remember specific situations where I’d hook a fish and land it on a small olive, unhook the fish, see my fly was bent open at a 45 degree angle. I’d just bend the paperclip back in, start fishing again, somehow be furious that I lost the next fish that mattered and see the thing straight up turned around at an 180 degree angle relative to the shank of the hook. That said, you can only get mad so many times before you realize the anger should be directed at yourself.
Its pretty easy to understand what happened over the time that hooks didn’t suck up to the point in time that they started to suck around the year 2000. More people started fly-fishing, there was a large enough pool of anglers to make money selling flies but the process had to be cheapened to be profitable, so we made flies that looked decent on hooks that were Chinese everything and essentially implemented a nike model for profitability teaching third world people with nimble fingers how to technically tie flies they know nothing about. A wholesale/retail market for flies grew and it’s remained that way ever since.
Being entirely unconfident in my fly tying abilities in the late 90’s and early 2000’s , I recognized I needed to get flies from private tyers/trusted sources. I would rely on people in my TU group or anglers I knew loved to tie to get my supply of go-to’s and important patterns for the season. That backfired on me too though, with the only benefit being what I am about to explain below.
I had a 2-3 year period in my early teenage years that almost drove me insane to the point of a mental breakdown. I had just started to really get dialed in on my casting, presentation, etc and was fishing well. However, at that time I had flies from a couple of sources that were largely tied on a strange hook that was very long shank, skinny gap, similar to a traditional stimulator type hook but even more extreme in terms of the long shank/skinny gap proportions. I had a two year period where I missed maybe 70% of the fish I got to take. I was getting heady about my hookset, am I setting too early, too late, setting too hard? Setting too straight up?
I was too young without enough experience at this point in time to critically think about the hook itself.
In or around 2001-2, I met this dude on the river that was a good guy and a great tyer. He gave me some flies that day and we stayed in touch. I used those flies for the next few weeks and out of nowhere started hooking at least half of my fish. It felt good to not be on the brink of mental collapse. I stopped thinking about the hookset in the moments leading up to a take, I just ripped when I saw the take and more times than not the fish was on. Timing or angle of my hookset didn’t really matter. I thought ok this can’t be that I just started doing something right- I’m doing the same thing I’ve been doing the whole time and it’s just working now. So what changed? This was subconsciously stirring in my mind for a couple months.
It wasn’t until a couple months later that I connected the dots. I was fishing a hatch and had tied on one of the flies I had from the previous dark years with skinny gap/long shank design. I missed my first fish that day. I said ok lets not go back to that dark place stay positive lets get the next one. Missed another. A third. I was somewhere around 0-5 when after I missed the last fish I wanted to scream and I pulled in my leader to cut the fly off just to try something different. The thought popped into my head that day for the first time as I cut that fly off, and was going to tie on a different fly that happened to be one of the flies I had been hooking fish on over the recent months, that yo- I have missed most of these fish for what seems forever on flies that all have a really narrow gap/long shank hook design. I made that fly change and hooked my next fish. That night, I emptied my box of almost every fly I had- and anything that did not have a wide gap. That was probably 20 years ago and I have never changed my mind on this point. Short shank wide gap hooks are critical to hook up percentage on dry fly eats. I started tying more myself recognizing the need to make sure the flies I had were on the hooks I wanted them to be on. I also sought out tyers that I could put orders in with and always emphasized wide gap/short shank when placing orders. As tippets got stronger and I just started fishing heavier tippet as a matter of my routine, I started also making sure dry flies were tied on heavy wire nymph hooks, just to make sure sure that the hook would not bend. That still is my approach to tying flies today.
WHY DOES SHORT SHANK/WIDE GAP MATTER?
When fishing dry flies to technical trout, you are often fishing quarter downstream. When doing that the fly is first to the fish, and the fish is facing upstream. That means that your hookset is essentially pulling the fly upstream- but hopefully also slightly sideways, into one of the corners of the fish’s mouth. A narrow gap is something that just defies the mechanics and process of a piece of metal actually penetrating and staying in a fish’s mouth. You have a bunch of metal that isn’t sharp or the hook point- being bounced around a fish’s mouth as you set- and some 1 centimeter gap is supposed to capture the beast? That’s before even considering patterns with post materials, large wings, or something protruding out in one direction cause the fly to not just perfectly enter a fish’s mouth and stay there. You need a wide gap to overcome those colliding forces to sink the steel more often than not.
I’ll give some very specific examples of flies that I came to learn over the formative years of my fishing life were downright flawed from a shop fly standpoint because of the hooks they were tied on.
First, Nothing epitomizes why you miss so many fish due to poor fly design/hook selection than hopper fishing. Out west, the foam terrestrial game is a crutch 99% of guides lean on and they all carry shop flies tied on the same bullshit hook. You go into a shop ask what flies are working out west, you get told chubby’s and purple haze and 3-4 other trippy fly names that are all just some other foam creation with the never fails “don’t hesitate to throw a dropper of that either brother”. The fact is these chubby’s are a bobber for guides, that can also get eaten. This said, shop fly hopper fishing will often result in 50%+ of your fish getting missed. Realizing this and after now tying my own for years, I overcompensate. Size 2-8 b10s Gamagatsu streamer hook suitable for a tarpon, make sure the foam is enough to offset the weight of the hook, and hackle wraps for buggy effect and to assist in floating the fly are important. I would say that since tying my own hoppers this way, the hookup rate is 80% or greater. The hookgap on most shop hoppers is almost the same width as the foam that is on the fly itself. You have a fly that is often taken aggressively, foam serving as a bouncy ball when eaten, and your fly is supposed to get stuck with that design? That’s like asking a girl to dance, but when you get on the floor you don’t put your arm around her waist, you just cup her ass real creepy with your pinky only to bring her in close. She obviously thinks the situation is weird and leaves. It’s over.
Griffiths gnat/Small Olives: Starting with the gnat- you have a fly that has hackle throughout its length. On a small fly, hackle might as well be a weed guard I firmly believe that. Instead of tying them on 22-24-26 hooks normal gap for small hook of that size- I use short shank wide gap 16-18 which translates often to true look of a 20-22. I also will just start the fly further up on the shank and take some of the hook out of the pattern itself so the profile of the bug is the same. But you have the hook gap of what is a normal sized bug and convert on your takes. This is especially important on pressured fish that get “nippy” and eat like a goldfish pecking shit after a couple months. They aren’t just crushing the fly and holding it for 1-2-3 seconds. They eat and reject within a 1 second period. The awkward eating style of pressured fish that get hooked often means you need the hook to stick them at some acceptable frequency- tho u definitely will miss more fish on top in pressured rivers for the reason of pressure itself and modified behavior from the fish when taking. Olives are the same deal as described above.
Streamer Patterns: First thing I am certain of is that the Carrie Stevens style hook for traditional streamer patterns is the most defective thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Lets go back to the Lasso analogy- you are trying to lasso the head of a huge elk you found in the woods- you have a lasso loop tied that is 8 feet long and 14 inches wide. It kind of looks like a dick drawn by a bad graffiti artist on the side of a building. You run out at the elk and have your shot, you let it go and it lands on the elks head, bounces off his antlers, briefly catches his ear, before falling to the ground. Elk is gone. Hardcore streamer bro’s I know what you’re thinking- “who fishes classic streamers anymore brah, go big or go home”. Not going to engage in debate about why a grey ghost can outperform your quadruple segmented gamechanger. However it brings me to the topic of when/what hooks fail on articulated streamers.
Shop articulated streamers you often see a decent at best front hook closest to the head, and then the most pathetic shit you’ve ever seen since that lost cowboy throwing dick lasso’s at elk in the mountain west thinking he had a shot. A size 4 hook lets say on average most times, followed by a size 6-8 hook on the back. Lets again think about the mechanics behind this- you have a go big or go home pattern on- head is spun deerhair or something with mass, fly itself is in the range of -4-7’’ most times. You also have a hinge point in the bug itself, so every time you pause, there is some type of angle were the back hook is 30-90 degrees relative to the head of the fly. We know how often the pause is key and when strikes come. The go cheap on the back hook thing fails here too often. The front hook still doesn’t have enough gap to consistently stick on full attacks with bulky material and a lot of stuff to push the fly around in the fish’s mouth and different angles before popping out. It’s not the “strip set” and other bullshit people blame for why the hook didn’t stick. I’ll give you a way to prove it. Tie an oversized size 2 black matuka- tie that matuka on a b10s- or special use bass popper hook from tiemco that looks like an eagle claw without the leader attached. Fish that fly on an intermediate line for the day you want to streamer fish and tell me how many fish you miss. Sparse flies/materials that have give and ample gap on the hook means 75% hookup rate on most days. Days when you’re missing most fish on streamers with good hooks means they aren’t eating their just pushing things out of their zone and you got lucky pricking a few in that process. For articulated streamers- I want 2 size 2 wide gap hooks every time. I don’t want too much head material on the underside of the head of the fly- again that’s a weedguard pushing the puck out of net and fish’s face. If I am finding the takes are not full commit- I usually want a single hook- wide gap, and will play with size to see if smaller overall fly draws full commit takes- or if they will only take the medium to bigger stuff I go single hook simple/sparser material patterns to try and make sure the fly is mostly hook. (deceiver- matuka- buggers- Clouser)
DRAKES/LARGE MAYFLIES: Perhaps nothing irritates me more in this Chinese metal ponzi scheme than a bad drake pattern. It’s a bug and hatch that for anglers is known to bring up some of the biggest fish of the season. The takes are hard and aggressive, and you’re fishing the flies on heavier than normal tippet- so there are forces at fly on the hook at the time the set takes place. The variety of horrendous retail drake patterns sold in shops is wide ranging so lets make sure we cover them all:
A-The crayon color drake that is like some AI generated alien slime green and looks nothing like a green drake
B-the size 12 green drake that is like fucking a midget and inapplicable to the natural world
C-The traditionally tied overdone hackle drake with the lasso dick carrie stevens special hook ensuring failure
D-The size 12 drake hook with the extended body that goes 3’’ past the hook.
The same can be said for march browns. Size 6-8 is your core and I like b10s hooks- special use bass popper hooks- old school Mustad hooks- wide gap short shank Daichi hooks. All nymph hooks- anything that says dry fly hook is basically telling you this hook goes to shit easier than the hooks that say nymph on it instead.
SPEY BROS: CUT SHANKS WITH SIZE 6-10 hooks on the back of a 3-5” intruder? If the fish doesn’t care why do you?
-classic steelhead patterns on heavy old steel hooks- why do it when you have newer era still strong hooks that are thinner and easier to sink the steel on?
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS:
The hook you use is the single most important component of equipment you use anytime you go fishing. When dry fly fishing, I think getting muscle memory on setting downstream is also critical. This means on a right to left set up (river is flowing from your right downstream to your left) as a right handed caster you have to set across your body horizontally and even slightly downward as part of that motion. This helps to make sure the fly goes in the corner where it sticks most times. Setting up and to the right on that same drift and set up as a right handed caster means you are pulling the fly out of the fish’s mouth- and maybe get lucky sometimes sticking the upper mouth area when its getting pulled away. If you are forced to buy shop flies, only buy dry flies that are bent hook patterns (caddis emerger hooks, etc). A straight shank paperclip just by way of its design is easier to bend with force applied vs. a bent shank hook because there is not as much leverage applied to any one part of a bent shank hook while fighting a fish. More of the hook is buried in the mouth on a bent hook as well which reduces leverage and likelyhood of it bending slightly.
The fact is though when you have good hooks you catch way more fish. I think that tying flies is arguably an essential skill to learn if you want to evolve as an angler and have control of the flies you fish and quality of those flies both in terms of the situations u plan to be in and ensuring the hooks are appropriate for the flies you fish. If you don’t tie, you need to find a private tyer to source your orders and make it clear that you want wide gap hooks that give you the best advantage. You should look closely at hooks when you are tying on- especially with a big fish you know requires a good hook. If you are torn on fly selection- you pick the fly that has the best hook first not the fly you just feel better about bc it looks buggy. “The one that got away” isn’t a required and supposed to be enjoyed right of passage in this sport- it’s a rationalization for poor equipment choices that originated when we all were not smart enough to critically think about why these things were happening. If you aren’t gunna tie your own flies, you at least need to know the hooks that exist out there and get a way to get your flies put on those hooks. And if one thing sticks with you, if you ever see a hook that looks like a poorly drawn dick on the side of a building- just throw it out. If you tie on flies that the hook looks more like a 3 sided rectangle instead of pornographic vandalism, you find your hookup rate is at least 50% most days. Even with an overemphasis on this and vetting your fly selection, you find a day you are struggling with usually is in part due to a fly that slipped through the cracks and has some strange design flaw where they are eating it weird or the hook just isn’t right. Question this always. If your hook bends, don’t turn it into a fish story where you had a worthy battle with Moby Dick. You should view yourself as the latest victim of the chinese metal market ponzi scheme and adjust accordingly.