Fishing Hook Morphology

There is a lot more to fishing hooks then just a bent wire with a barb on it. The hook manufactures put a lot of testing into these products to make them more than just a wire with a barb on it. Design, sharpness and strength all are considered by the manufacturer to create a hook that can drive through the plastic body of the lure and into the fish’s jaw to hook the fish.

The worm hook, for example, has many designs to pick from. The wider the gap of the hook has, the better the odds of a hookup. But the wider the gap is, the higher the chance the hook will open under pressure. A heavier wire will prevent bending out, but with a bigger wire the point has to be sharper to make it easy to set. The heavier the wire the harder it is to get the sharpness needed.

As a rule of thumb, the finer the point and the smaller the barb the easier the hook sets, but if it is too fine and the barb too small you will lose the fish. Some hooks have rounded points, some 3 sided points, and some have more than one barb. All the premium hooks are super sharp so be very careful. They go in you almost painlessly, but trying to get them out is a different story.

Most manufactures make some hooks with a double 90-degree bend at the eye end of the hook. These bends help hold the bait on the hook and can keep the bait straight so it will not spin. Some hooks have barbs or composites and other things on the shank to lock the plastic bait in place.

Swim-bait hooks are hooks that are designed to get the lure to swim true and at the same time having the point exposed above the thick body of the lure. These hooks are odd shaped and have wide gapped hooks.

There are also a number of specialty and finesse hooks for drop shotting and other finesse tactics. The unique fishing tactics have their own unique designed hooks to meet the fishing method.

So the designers of fish hooks are helping us to be more successful in catching our fish by the little tweak and styles they are fashioning. I appreciate it because there are days I need all the help I can get to catch them fishes.