Last fall a buddy and I were crappie fishing, and I started to become aware that I was missing maybe 20% of my hits. At first I thought it was the plastic not being mounted quite right but that wasn't it when I checked. Anyway, we finished the morning of fishing and after getting back home I checked that jig to see if I was missing something. My buddy pointed out the that hook had a pretty severe dip in the point. The hook in question was the Victory 11149 Sickle variety, one that I've cast literally thousands of jigs on since they came out. I got the box of hooks down off the shelf and we started to snoop thru them and found that most all of the hooks were indeed beaked pretty radical. I dug out a box of old Matzuos in the same size [6] as well as a box of Lil Nastys in size six and yup, they all were beaked. Being curious I brought down a box of the Victory 10575 size six hooks and, wow, the difference in the hook's point was amazing. I got a pic of two 1/16 head with wires, both cast on #6 hooks: the top jig being the 11149 Sickle and the bottom the 10575 You can see the dip in the Sickle variety as compared to the other which is as straight as an arrow.
I decided it was time for a little test in really so I cast a half dozen of the 10575's in sixes and took them along with my stash of the number six Sickles to the river this morning. I started my morning with the Sickle variety because its been my go-to for as long as the hooks have been made available. Using a 2-1.4" minnow bait in junebug with a chartreuse tail, my first ten hits resulted in six hook-ups with 5 fish landed. Then I cut the Sickle off and tied on the 10575 variety hook, still in size six. The same bait was hung on the jig. The next ten hits resulted in ten landed fish. I tried hard to keep the actual hook sets the same as far as how hard I set the hook. I think I'm pretty consistent in that department so I'm not including the hook set in the observation. But I'm letting what I experienced be a deciding factor in future jigs. As far as sharp in concerned, both the 11149 and the 10575 are about as sharp as any hook I have used so I'm really focused now on that turned down point.
Don't get me wrong: Sickle hooks have been extremely good to me ever since Matzuo first came out with them. And after Eagle Claw started with the lil nastys I've been a loyal user of those until Victory introduced their Sickle hooks and they've been the standard for me since then. Still, I'm going to spend the rest of this season using the 10575 hooks for my crappie and walleye jigs just to see if I've missed the boat using Sickles so steadfastly.
I'll also point out the keeper wire. On crappie sized plastic I cut the keeper barb back by about 50% before painting and curing. On narrow baits with the wire as it comes it would sometimes split a bait. Reducing the height of the barb still allows the plastic to stay firmly attached but doesn't result in the splitting on narrow baits.
I'm really curious if any others here that have cast the two different hooks have experienced anything like I have.
