Guiding You In Your Quest For More And Bigger Fish
One of the techniques that has gained enormous popularity in the past several years is throwing a swimbait. For most anglers, the easiest, most effective way to do this is to get the solid body, boot tail version, put it on a jighead, throw it out and let the lure do the work.
It’s an easy way to present a natural looking lure and it catches fish year round. Of course, one of the components you’ll have to decide on is which jighead to use with which swim bait.
[Read more…]
Have you ever wished for a simple piece of terminal tackle to fill a specific need that does one thing and one thing only but does it very well? I know that we have. In particular, I’ve always wanted something that protects my knot, allows soft plastic jerkbaits along with other weightless plastics to slide through weeds easier without getting a bunch balled up on the front of the bait and, just for hoots and giggles, extends the life of those baits a little longer while avoiding any negative affect on the action of the bait.
Yeah, I know I said one thing, but I meant to say, one item that accomplishes all these things. Is there any such product? [Read more…]
My son and I were talking a few days ago about all that we have seen that has come and gone in the fishing world including those products that were brand new a lot of years ago and are now staples in our fishing. One of those that has survived virtually unchanged is Power Pro braided line.
When we originally started using this line it was after having tried several others and being frustrated with the performance of those. I know that this is one of those subjects that tends to be much more subjective than objective for a lot of folks but all we can do is give it to ya’ll straight and see what happens. [Read more…]
In the interest of covering all of our bases and making it simple for our newer readers, today we are going to look at our gold standard for dropshot weights. For the past few seasons, we have been and continue to use the River2Sea Tungsten Tear Drop Shot Sinker for all of our dropshot applications.
Now I know that some of you are going to read this and completely disagree with me. That’s fine, but if you’ve never tried the River2Sea, you really don’t know what you’re missing. You may find yourself asking, “Have you guys ever tried brand X?”. [Read more…]
The 2011 ICAST show had dozens of quality offerings in the terminal tackle department, an today we are going to give you our in-depth review of one of those products, the Owner JigRig Tungsten Weighted Hook.
No, it’s not a jig or a football head or anything quite like that. It is a hook, with a welded ring through the eye, with an elongated tear drop shaped weight attached to it.
So why in the world would you want this and what, if any, advantages does it have over other pieces of tackle you already possess? Let’s get it in the water and find out. [Read more…]
D Hold Weighted
We’re going to look at another piece of terminal tackle that was debuted at ICAST and is now showing up on shelves. The Damiki D Hold Hook Weighted. We already reviewed the un-weighted version of this hook and found that it simply couldn’t replace our gold standard but we figured why not give this one a shot?
This product makes use of the same keeper system as its cousin but uses an interestingly shaped weight molded onto the hook shank. We obtained this product specifically for use with swimbaits but there are secondary uses for something like this.
So off to the lake to see how they would perform. We tried a variety of baits with this hook including the Double Diamond and Netbait BK. In both cases, the D Hold keeper did indeed keep the bait on the hook and did this quite well. Unfortunately, we had the same issues with this one as we did with the un-weighted version.
Before we go into that, know that the D Hold is sharper than the average bear and is strong. You can use this hook on heavy mono or braid without worrying that you’re going to bend it by putting the wood to a good strike. It penetrates well and the barb does its job. We didn’t have a single fish shake this hook after being stuck. However, those nagging little design irritants kept cropping up.
While rigging your bait straight is a no-brainer on the Damiki, the other issues surface when you penetrate the bait with the hook point. The first of these is that the keeper makes contact with the hook shank. This throws the bait slightly out of plumb. I may be splitting hairs here but it is at least a minor annoyance in my opinion as it makes the baits that we were using run just a little bit off.
Again, like its un-weighted stable mate, the angle of the hook is such that it makes tex-posing virtually impossible. I like to make sure that when I’m fishing a swimbait, there is no exposed point of the hook. Fishing baits like the BK, you have to have the confidence to throw them into and drag them through stick-ups, lily pad stems, submerged tree branches and other forms of cover that will catch bare hook points. The Damiki does not inspire that sense of security.
We also used this hook by not penetrating the back of some of the baits that we experimented with. If you enjoy fishing weighted senko style baits for example, this isn’t a bad alternative. By not going all the way through the bait, you eliminate both the issue of the keeper making contact with the hook and the angle of the hook sticking up and out of the back. This proved to be an effective way to use this hook but still wasn’t exceptional. Again, the Damiki didn’t have enough going for it to replace what we already carry in our tackle boxes.
| Damiki D Hold Weighted Hooks | |
|---|---|
| Overall Rating |   |
| Not enough here to replace what you have | |
See ya’ on the water …
Damiki D Hold Hooks
At ICAST 2011, new terminal tackle was being shown everywhere. We decided to pick up a new product from Damiki called the D-Hold Hook. These are offered in both weighted and unweighted versions as well as several sizes in both versions. The first one we obtained was the unweighted in 5/0 to do duty for senko style baits, soft-plastic jerkbaits and other lures like craws, worms and lizards to see how they would perform with these proven standards.
One caveat here, we knew that it wouldn’t provide the same flexibility as a standard EWG when it comes to soft plastics and that you cannot cover your knot with your bait using a product like this. But there are enough applications that hook variations similar to this have found a permanent home in my tackle box and if a new product comes out that would be superior to the ones I currently depend on, it would be silly not to consider it.
The D-Hold Hooks use a piece of wire that is attached to the hook eye that resembles a lower-case, open backed, letter d. The idea being that you thread the head of the bait onto this piece of wire, being very conscious to limit the angle and depth of the plastic that you penetrate, and then onto the hook. The way the keeper is attached to the hook eye is akin to a fast-snap which leaves some of the wire sticking out and pointing to the far end of the wire.
Due to this design, you have to be careful to avoid going through more than about 1/4 inch of plastic on the head. The bait keeper will both interfere with, and have to penetrate the head of the bait. You cannot thread a bait on, in the same fashion as using a standard EWG.
The hook point is sharp, the barb is adequately sized but because of the keeper, the hook seems to be oversized when you put a bait on it. It just didn’t matter what lure we tried, the D-Hold always wound up with the hook point further down the body of the bait than other hook styles in the same size.
Notice the strange design of the keeper
The keeper is effective for holding the bait in place. However, if you’re using a slimmer profile plastic, the far end of the wire will stick up through the lure which allows weeds a place to get stuck. Unfortunately, we tried to adjust the holder but when we did, then the lowest portion of the wire would hit the hook shank which tweaked the bait to one side or the other. Not a great deal but enough to be mildly annoying.
I rig a lot of soft plastics with the hook point tex-posed into the bait as I’m sure most of you do. With the D-Hold, the angle of the hook points up a few degrees. This wasn’t at all apparent until we actually started putting baits on the hooks. Personally, I don’t want my hook point sticking out of the plastic for the presentations that are supposed to be weedless. It sorta’ defeats the purpose if you can still get hung up on a bunch of stuff cause’ your hook keeps popping out of the plastic.
We tried a myriad of different baits with these hooks with varying degrees of success, most of which were what we consider sub-par. Damaki makes some high-quality, proven products. Unfortunately, this one misses the mark for us and we can’t give it a rating that it doesn’t deserve.
| Damiki D Hold Unweighted Hooks | |
|---|---|
| Overall Rating |  |
| We can't give this one a strong recommendation | |
See ya’ on the water …
We don’t often talk about the specialized tackle that is used to target toothy critters of both the fresh and salt-water varieties but we
Tbyo Koeki offers well constructed high quality products
recently found a company with some amazing products. Tbyo Koeki Co. out of Japan, is one of those who are making inroads by producing high quality products aimed at the needs of those anglers who relish catching these swimming mouths full of needles.
They produce tackle in test pound ratings that range from around 30 all the way up to 300 and then some. They feature a variety of materials including nylon coated wire leaders, heavy fluorocarbon leaders and solid titanium leaders, all with double-lock snaps and ball bearing swivels in a dizzying array of lengths to match your needs.
We had a friend do a salt water test for us. We needed an expert to take the equipment through its paces in the ocean. After taking this out on a seven-day trip, in which he was fishing for everything from Tuna to Kings and in-between, he came back very pleased with the performance of this gear. During his trip, he didn’t see a single failure in the construction of the leaders either where the snaps are attached or where the swivels are attached on the other end.
Through repeated strikes and fights, the wire held its shape as did the other components in all the test pound classes and tying to the leaders, according to him, was a breeze. To top it off, getting back took some real horse-trading.
With that information, we decided to give the destruction of these items a go utilizing some unusual methods. First up, the saw that comes standard on most Leatherman type tools.
Hey, when you’re dealing with titanium that is designed to stand up to rows of sharp teeth, why not? We put the leaders in a vice, got out the stop watch, and went to work! Yes, we were able to, with a great deal of effort and more time than we had anticipated, cut through the material. But that was focused pressure on one specific spot on the material. Would a fish be able to do that? I don’t think so, at least not to the degree we were!
After that I figured why not get out the heavy artillery in the form of wire cutters and see how they would stand up to that kind of abuse. Once again, I was able to achieve my objective of destroying the material but only with a lot more effort than I expected.
The bottom line is that the Tbyo Koeki terminal tackle is everything that it is advertised to be and then some. I do know that this will be my tackle of choice for pike, musky or any other water wolves. If you like fishing for these types of fish, or, if you do any salt-water fishing for fish with big nasty teeth, this equipment will not fail you.
See ya’ on the water …
In Package
Let’s look at a new piece of terminal tackle from the folks at Dirty Jigs called the Pivot Point Football Jig. A lot of us use football jigs this time of year for fishing deep and probing humps, islands or crawling down channels.
This new jig is designed to allow your soft plastic more freedom of movement by employing a second eye on the football with the hook attached to it. The two loops are on opposite sides of the jig head with the line tie being at 60 degrees and the other loop holding the eyelet of a Gamakatsu Superline Offset EWG Hook. [Read more…]