Mustad-
noun.Norwegian word meaning "chity fish hook".
The eyes are brittle and quite difficult to get completly closed without breaking. Fishing line, especially braid, and the twine on landing nets, especially the knited knotless type, have an uncanny way of squeezing through even the narrowest gap in the eye of the hook. You can heat the eyes but you have to close them while they're still red hot because the alloy they're made of won't anneal. Also if you heat them you'll burn off the nickel and chromium in the alloy so that they'll rust and stain all your bucktail a pretty chocolate brown. Even if you do get by the problem of the brittle eyes there's the other problem. Way to many of the curved tip style siwash break at the bend, a little bit behind the barb.
Conclusion: All you need to know about Mustad, see line 1.
VMC- The first season we used them, it was all good. The second season the eyes were snapping like potato chips. WTF? We figured out that it was only the hooks that had been used the previous season that were doing it. If we made them up fresh, even from the same batch as the older hooks that were now breaking, there was no problem. Again, WTF? So I went to the drugstore and bought a pair of cheaters, +2.5 dioptors and had a closer look. There it was, a very faint, almost microscopic crack in the closed eye of the hook. Then I checked an older used hook from the same batch and there it was again only this time the crack was much more pronounced, wider and surrounded with brown stain.
Conclusion: VMC is no better than Mustad. It seems that when you close the eye on VMC tiny cracks form. Upon exposure to salt water, corrosion sets up in these cracks and forces them to widen and propagate.
Eagle Claw- About 15 years ago we were at some Fish-Expo or something and Eagle Claw was there handing out samples of their new stainless siwash hooks. At that time their big claim was that you could close and open the eyes several times without any damage. It was now time to try them so we got some and sure enough, their claim was good. That is, it was good untill just a few years ago when the batch we got was so brittle that it made Mustad and VMC seem downright ductile. The material that the original hooks were made from was a bit soft, that's why the eyes could withstand repeated opening without breaking but that's also why the bend of the hook would straighten under extreme stress. We didn't care about that because the amount of force required to straighten the hook was far in excess of anything we could exert with sport gear. Nevertheless, Eagle Claw must have gotten some complaints about their hooks straightening and this new and improved stiffer, much stiffer, material was their answer. Only problem was that now you couldn't close the eyes without breaking over half of them, and the ones you did manage to get closed could often be broken with only a little hand preasure.
We called and complained. They told us there'd been some production problems but it was all fixed and they'd gladly replace the hooks. They replaced them alright,only with more of the same. They replaced 'em a second time, same junk. It was all BS.
At this point we're back to square one, no source for stainless siwash hooks that are any good and now I'm fresh out of ideas. In desperation I just started tinkering around to see if somehow I could get these things to work. Completly by accident I found that the alloy used in Eagle Claw's new version could be readily annealed. All you had to do is heat the eye to a dull cherry-red and allow to air cool. Even if you quenched in water it still seemed to work just fine. Moreover, inspite of some slight to moderate heat discoloration the alloy seems to retain it's stainless quality. If it rusts at all, it's only very slight surface stain and once again you can open and close the eyes several times without failure.
Conclusion: If you want reliable stainless siwash hooks, Eagle Claw is the only choice
as long as you anneal the eyes.
Availability can be tough, but as of last year, anyway, they can be had from Eagle Claw's retail store, phone. 720 941-8723. Eagle Claw's general phone number, 720 941-8700. On line info.
www.eagleclaw.com
Some product numbers:
Stainless siwash, straight point L208SS
Stainless siwash, curved point L211SS
some others of possible interest:
Stainless circle hooks P175 Blue Water
Stainless live bait hooks P135 'Chovie
Stainless live bait hooks,
XXX heavy P136 The Dean
And just in case it makes any difference,
MADE IN USA
Duranickel- I'm mentioning this company only for the sake of completeness. It's a very small company. I think it's still in business, been around longer than capesams. I won't even hazard a guess as to availability. I still have some of their old stock and this is all I can tell you about their products: They offered a large variety of hook styles, even some double tuna hooks I think. The material, although somewhat soft, had adequate strength for whatever task was at hand. Don't rinse it, leave it laying in the bilge for years, no problem, never a hint of stain. Plenty ductile, open and close the eyes countless times. As for weight, they tended to be a bit heavy. In some applications they might tend to muffle lure action a bit.
That's it, everything I know about stainless hooks. Well almost everythinng. One last note: If this seems like a ridiculous amount of trouble just for a lously stainless hook, well you're right, it is. In my case, however, money is involved and money does change
everything.
It's the one on the back of many of the Hab's Elite. NO rust, and almost certainly the strongest siwash available.
Linear Mode
