Florida bassers Tommy Clark and Shaw Grigsby designed the HP (high performance) hook for fishing tube baits. The hook is a modified Kahle design with a clip at the eye to hold a tube. Now made by Eagle Claw, the HP in a #1 or 1/0 is the favorite rigging due to high hookup percentage and the clip, which secures the tube.
Novel styles of worm hooks have appeared, like Eagle Claw’s R-Bend models with teflon coating. (Don’t lose the instructions or you’ll never get this one rigged right.) Tournament Lures’ Niflor finish initiated the coating craze around 1985 with their smooth finish intended to slide easily through jaw tissue.
On Berkley’s outbarb Gold Point Hooks, the point is coated with Xylan for friction-free sets. In a return to older styles, Mustad has added the Denny Brauer Flippin’ Hook, a straight-shank needle-point style available in 1/0 through 5/0. The straight pull gives a powerful bite for hooking big bass at close range.
Hook size generally ranges from #1 for small plastic worms or tubes up to 5/0 for rigging big lizards or flipping meaty worms. Owner widened the playing field with its Oversize Worm Hook, in 7/0 and 11/0, with a 90-degree bend and long offset portion of the shank to secure big baits. And whoever decided that hooks could only come in full sizes didn’t convince Eagle Claw, which offers their Featherlite Lazer Sharp offset-shank worm hook in half sizes from 0.5/0 to 3.5/0.
Manufacturers also have sought to improve the offset design for worm hooks, which readily tears worms on hooksets or even when panfish peck the bait. Mister Twister’s Keeper was the original design to hold a worm in place with a spike that penetrated through the center of the worm. Their new Smart Hook goes one better by replacing the barbed wire with a spindle-shape section of plastic that slides into the plastic. It doesn’t tear plastic.
Instead, the suction between hard and soft plastic holds baits firmly. Mustad also has explored this realm with its Needle Power Lock Line that features a double-barb wire to hold baits at the hook eye. And the same system is used in Mustad’s fine-wire Fin-A’cky hooks designed for tubes, grubs, and other small plastics.
Swivels
The metallurgists who toil over new hook designs and materials haven’t spent much time on swivels, another component of some riggings. Fortunately, these simple devices work well with little need for improvement. While a barrel swivel won’t spin like one with a high-grade ball bearing, it also won’t freeze as bearing swivels can. Sampo built a better mousetrap, but bulk brass models function fine for most rigging applications.
While Carolina rigs require a swivel to set the heavy sinker several feet in front of the plastic bait, California rigs (which set a light sinker a foot or two ahead of the bait) and floating worm rigs work best with a swivel. For floating worms, which don’t really float but slowly drift below the surface, the swivel provides sufficient weight.
