I should have thought of this sooner but didn’t remember about it until I saw the results of it on sunday. In a previous post when we where talking about ideas that are small but can help out huge on tourney day? Well I ALWAYS change the hooks on my crank baits, stick baits, and traps. I take off those factory hooks and throw on gamakatsu’s (spelling?). This really is crazy how much it helps. On sunday I went out and braved the 30 mph wind and fished some sand flats where the wind was pushing waves up on em and was nailing smallmouths, but they were hitting short because half of the fish i cuaght were hooked in the head or side of the face. Those hooks are so sharp and can really help out huge. Just keep your hand away from them unless you want to use the pliers on yourself. Another good tip that I found some suprising sucess to is to remove the front hook on a crank,stick, or rattle trap and replace it with an equal sized RED hook. It aparently was found in a study that bass will hit that hook more than the [Ooops, did I just say that out loud?!] end, It really seemed to work for me. But the purpose is to help land more hooked fish. when the fish is hooked on that back hook there is alot of play in the hook to line distance and the fish can shake loose much easier than being hooked on the front fish.
On a side note: biggest fish sunday was a 20″ smallie, est 4.5lbs. Very healthy fish.
