By Len Piggin
The Dilemma:
Here I am sitting at my vice tying bone-fishing flies, getting ready for my trip to the Bahamas, and I ran out of hooks by Daiichi. So, I had to buy hooks from a different manufacturer. It turned out the size of the hooks that I newly purchased wasn’t the same as what I was using: a Daiichi 2546 #8 and a Daiichi X452 #8 are not the same size! Why is that a problem? Fishers can be superstitious when you have something that works, and the “new” hooks I are a different size, and that hook I was using worked really well. Now, all of a sudden, I have to buy Gamakatsu SL 11-3H #8, and it turns out their #8 is closer to a Daiichi #6! And all I want to do is tie some bone-fishing flies on the hook that worked so well last time. Darn.
Let’s have a look at the parts of a hook. Everything looks good here.
One thing I found working at the Wholesale Sports fishing counter is that a lot of customers didn’t understand what all the numbers on the hook packages meant.
We have all the background information on hooks. Now, let’s look at the same hook by three different manufacturers. They are all named “scud hooks”, and now you’ll see my dilemma.
- If I do a search on the Internet on “Hook Comparison Chart” you will get many different charts showing the various Manufacturers and their equivalent hook numbers. Not all manufacturers have equivalent hooks for each type of hook.
The bottom line is it isn’t easy to find a comparable hook, even with all the information out there. The best thing you can do is stay with one manufacturer, and hope they don’t discontinue the model of hooks you use.
Tight lines.
By Leonard P. Piggin
President KFFA
Director BCFFF
