You crazy using small gap hooks ,read below .. Bill Tobin,known as a hackle raiser of Cortland ,N.Y. Showed me that using a down eye Mustad 9479 ,16 not only hole a large fish but the hook can get in the flesh of a fish and turn and the point can penetrate out as the hook was design. Small hooks 20 and under usually just hook in the flesh and sometimes can slip out. and create allot of misses. So back in the 30's and in the U.K.all midges use short shank hooks. All you have to do is proportion the materials as you will tie on a smaller hook ,with the same amount on a short shank hook.The hackle can be smaller then the gap of the hook. Two hooks I feel is the best is Daiichi # 1510 in size 16 and Mustard in 9479 in size 16 . Now if your interested to tie a fly in sizes 24 or smaller then both these companies also make these same hooks in a size 18 .. These hooks will save allot of hooking problems while fishing etc..Bill Tobin felt that a up eye hook gave the appearance of a larger fly and the down eye on these hooks have plenty of hooking gap . I sure like the Daiichi 1510 hooks for strength and sharpness ,if I had to choose one brand. You may check on hellekson.com and view Bill Tobin's patterns.Again I like using shorter hackle as pictured . Glenn Overton ----- Original Message ----- From: Wes Wada To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 10:36 AM Subject: Re: [VFB] Small hooks
I have a friend who bought #22 and #24 2XS 2XH Tiemco hooks in large quantities before they were discontinued. These are short shank, curved scud hooks in heavy wire. He catches a lot of big fish on patterns tied on this dinky hook, and he swears by them. If you fish for big lunkers using the typical light wire scud hook, a lot of times the fish just bend them out and get off. The heavy wire is a good idea in this case. I was looking through the hook references and noted that Tiemco has introduced (at least new to me) a 2XS, 2XH, 3XW straight-eye heavy wire forged scud hook that goes down to size #24. The number on that one is: 2488H I would expect that this is the model that replaced the one that was discontinued. The straight-eye also is an advantage if you want to maintain as big a gape as possible for these small hooks. On the shopping list... Wes Wada Bend, Oregon
