ASSIST HOOKS | WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

hey what's up it's kit time for another video today we're talking about jigging hooks and this is for both slow jigging and fast jigging assist hooks for those of you that are just joining us now thanks so much for clicking on this video and this channel actually talks about the hows and whys of fishing and we cover everything from ultralight to big game everything in the middle and fly fishing now this is not a brand specific video although i have some brands here that might be familiar to you so this is what i have and this this is um what i'm going to be using as examples now at the end of this video it'll help you actually know or determine which hooks to use for your assist hooks or if you're actually buying ready-made ones you could use this or the pointers here as guidelines on how to choose so that you'll have a more effective system firstly we have ready-made assist hooks and these are examples right here so everything that you see there is actually ready-made and everything that you see here on the bottom are all customs the ones that i tied myself now if you are into tying assist hooks then or if you're new to tying assist hooks there be some pointers later on about these and then first let's talk about the ready-made assist hooks so ready-made assist hooks as you could imagine come in different sizes different lengths different hook configurations so on and so forth now for fast jigging you'll see a lot of single hooks okay there are also ones that have double hooks now i have examples here of double hooks that are pre-made you can get them as small as size twos and then it goes up from there there are different varieties out there and they have function now what to look for would be forged hooks okay first thing that you should look at would be forged hooks now you can see that this hook is actually not round it's kind it's flat now the reason for this is that forging makes it stronger and also it's thinner in profile so when you hook a fish it'll it'll have an easier time actually going in now as far as sizing goes if you can see here how i size this even if the hook is like that there's a bit sticking out so that's how i size mine now other people use smaller hooks but for me as a standard i go to the lowest part of where the hook could possibly go to and then you can see that even if it's right down there you can see the hook sticking out so that's my basic guideline for choosing hooks and it doesn't matter if the hooks are actually double or single just as long as they're actually just a tad wider than the jig that's the right size to use ready-made hooks come with split rings that are already the right size for customs you could actually make them smaller that's entirely up to you but remember the smaller you go the poundage also goes down but it is a bit stealthier and for some people they they like that but for me what i always look for is actually if the jig has a lot of freedom of movement and when you have a lot of freedom with your jig it moves better that's a standard for actually either slow or fast hook shapes there are those that have angles and those that are rounded those that are rounded are actually a bit thicker when it comes to the wire used those that are thinner are those that are angled usually have thinner wire this is because each time you put an angle on the hook it becomes kind of like a fulcrum and it becomes stronger so if you compare take for example if you have this this is thick wire so if you have something like this that has the same wire gauge as this this shape will more than likely not open and this is the reason why with hooks that have flat surfaces like this they can get away with thinner gauged wire and this particular one was actually made specifically for big fish here's a very very good example here for as far as the lengths are concerned when you have a jig and you actually put these assist hooks together they shouldn't touch so that they don't tangle so that is like that some actually have these uh flashers okay so crystal flash actually that's the right term for them and for shallower water they actually work pretty well in attracting fish but for deeper water where the sun can't really penetrate it's much better to have ones with no flash so for shallow water this is good for deeper water the ones without that's what's good some manufacturers actually recommend the hook size according to the jig the problem with that is that if you actually have really wide jigs and there are a lot out there especially for slow jigs the hook size recommendation that they have wouldn't really fit the jig a lot of manufacturers of jigs actually have their own assist hooks when you go to other brands though sometimes they kind of fall short okay so that's the disadvantage of ready-made hooks before we actually move on i'd like to talk about the finish because this is quite important now as you can see here this this one has a protection and that's for a good reason so the normal ones that you see are black nickel there's this silver titanium or tin and then there's these gray ones sometimes dark gray and if you touch them okay it feels like it has oil and the reason for that is that it has a type of coating called ptfe essentially silicone okay and what it does is when it hooks it goes straight in it's very very slick there are some assist hooks out there that utilize this kind of finishing and what that enables you to do is actually use lighter line okay even when you're using heavy line as soon as the fish hits and you reel up without setting with the rod the hooks immediately just bite another thing you should consider when choosing hooks for your jigs is the gate and the gape is very important because this is what a lot of people miss out on so they think that you could use whatever size hook for the jig or whatnot but the gape actually dictates how much meat it holds so for me i actually go for the bigger hooks for my jigs or the biggest that i can get away with because when the fish bites it just holds more flesh so you have a lot more holding power with fast jigs you can have single or double hooks my preference is always going to be on just one hook as far as my fast jigs are concerned for my slow jigs it's a different story if i can get away with actually two assist hooks there one from the back and one from the top i'd more than likely actually use those now the the ones at the back don't really hook as much of the fish in the mouth the ones in front actually do that now what what the the ones at the back do is actually snag the fish so it assists you into bringing the fish up and actually have a bit more of a connection point to the fish that's why you'll see a lot of fish in the pictures that have these stuck to the side of the face or near the fin and that's the reason for that it's also the reason why the hooks are pointed like that because it's already towards facing towards the fish and the likelihood of these actually snagging the fish is higher in this kind of configuration with the hooks like that okay so as you can see there's as opposed to having them pointing out with similar to a fast jig or how fast jigging hooks are they're pointed out so when the fish grabs this this one's away whereas with these one actually faces the fish and the more it struggles the more likelihood that both of these actually snag it and the other one as well especially with ptfd coated hooks that's just lethal now with the shorter stubby ones you could just put one and that's it if you see this when it lays flat because this is made so that there's another split ring here on top so you see that it lays flat whereas with this one it lays vertically if it lays vertically like that it's better to have a small solid ring just keeps it in position whereas with the fast jig it kind of doesn't matter now i have a very good example here of me using a bigger solid ring just so the hook sits nicely on the jig with customs there are a few things that you need to understand especially when you're actually tying your own assist hooks now as you can see here the assist hooks have the tie or the line on the bottom the reason being is your hook point will always point towards the direction of your line now if you have it reversed it will travel that way as opposed to traveling in towards the mouth of the fish so if you're making a cyst hooks and you're tying it on top you're more than likely to actually miss more fish so that's one thing that you need to pay attention to when you're actually doing these now there are several things that you need to consider when you're tying your own one is the length the right length for custom assist hooks depends on which jig you're putting it on so like take for example this one as you can see it'll go lower than say factory made one you could do that with customs and you could do a lot with customized assist hooks obviously this is the whole reason why i actually advise people to learn how to make these things because you could actually do a lot more if you buy your own materials of course that is with with the um thought that you have time to make these things now if you're into this sort of thing great you can customize each size and length of cord for the jig you can choose your solid ring size you could you choose your length the length of your cord and the size of your cord also the size of your hook if you want a really long one you could do that if you want a really short one you could do that of course there's no limitation when it comes to customized hooks the most important thing there is actually your hook choice more than the length because a lot of people really use either hooks that are either too small or too big sometimes they use hopes that are kind of too heavy so if you're dealing with slow jigs it's much better to actually go with lighter weight hooks for heavy duty usage such as this one this is the vmc 7269 and it's a it's a very very good hook before i forget this particular one you can see there's white and red cords the red cords are actually kevlar whereas the white ones are dyneema so if you have an area that has a lot of toothy critters it might be a good idea to actually splice in some kevlar or for this particular one it's actually ready made and it's from vmc there they call it the fish fighter series and it's excellent to actually hold the fish a bit more rather than just getting chopped off real fast so you still have a chance to actually bring up a toothy critter with something like this or you could use wire alright so if you have questions please comment if i missed something again just please comment below and tell me what i missed and we'll just discuss if you haven't yet please subscribe and give us a like thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: TheFishingKit

Views: 62,688

Keywords: #fishing, assist hooks, why assist hooks, what hooks for assist hooks need to know, assist hook basic need to know, best assist hooks what you need to know, how to choose assist hooks for jigs, jigging assist hooks what you need to know, best hook for assist hooks, how to choose assist hooks, assist hook for jigging, What to look for when you buy or make assist hooks, What you need to know about Assist hooks, slow jigging assist hooks, understand assist hooks, assist hooks rigging

Id: iRcRnkfBr68

Length: 13min 9sec (789 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 30 2020