VMC Spinshot Dropshot Hooks

Spinshot In Package

With spring rapidly approaching, there are a lot of techniques that the angler can use to put fish in the boat including but not limited to, finesse fishing. If you’ve never tried drop-shotting, you are missing out on a very productive way to catch finicky bass.

One of the new pieces of terminal tackle that previewed at ICAST is one that will help any angler when it comes to using the drop-shot rig—the VMC Spinshot Dropshot Hooks.

We obtained the Spinshot’s and have been using them through the winter season and now into early spring. The idea behind this design is simple, make a stand alone hook system that will eliminate or greatly reduce the typical disadvantages that are associated with drop-shotting. What are those you ask?

Why You Need Drop Shot Hooks

Dropshot fishing is notorious for causing line twist. With a hook fixed to your line above a weight, when you have a fish on, they did tend to twist the line during the course of a fight. Multiply that by several fish and it becomes obviously problematic. That was the impetus for the creation of specialized dropshot hooks like the VMC.

Is it possible to get similar results in terms of reduction in line twist prior to systems like these?

Yes, but it involves using a lot of extra hardware that I for one, am not a fan of tying on my line.

I look at it like this: Dropshotting is a finesse technique that by definition is used when the bass are in a neutral to negative mood. In other words, the angler is using a combination of stealth and diminutive sized baits to coax wary fish to bite. Loading up your line with forty-eleven extra pieces of hardware, seemed to me, to be the antithesis of finesse fishing.

VMC Spinshot Construction

The VMC eliminates the need for any of this nonsense by providing all those benefits in one, clean, well executed package with a minimal profile to distract or alert fish that something is, pardon the pun, fishy. The simplicity of the swivel that is attached to the eyelet belies how effective it really is. Without bearings of any kind, rather just a simple piece of wire with eyelets on both ends for line ties, the hook spins freely.

During the course of our testing with the Spinshot Dropshot Hooks, we have not had any of these components fail in any way. You can drag it through some much that gets caught in the swivel but simply clearing the crud gets the hook spinning freely again.

The one area of concern that we have experienced is with the hook itself. The VMC hooks are very sharp out of the package but use a thin wire. We have had the tip of the hook roll on us. Personally, I’m not a big fan of having to take a pair of pliers to a hook point to straighten it. I just always feel as though I am compromising either the barb or inadvertently dulling the hook point. I do have to add that we have not however had any actually break.

VMC Spinshot Wrap Up

Clever Design Makes The VMC Spinshot Worth A Try

We have used these hooks with a number of baits of different sizes and have been very pleased with their performance in all but a few cases. Effectiveness can drop when a bait has a large piece of plastic on the nose.

We mentioned in our post on dropshotting that we don’t like to see any more than about 60% of the hook covered by the bait. Yes you can get a larger size, but again, this is a finesse technique which ideally uses the smallest possible hook to get the job done.

As of this writing, there are 6 sizes offered in the VMC product. Each package comes with 5 hooks and retails for about four bucks. While this may seem a little on the steep side, we think of it in terms of ease of use and time saved having some value.