Musky America Magazine March 2024 Edition

It's A Simple Modification But can it make a difference? Craig Sandell © 2010 There seems to have emerged some additional interest in the practice of heat shrinking the tail hook on Musky lures. Supposedly, this will position the hook for a higher hookup percentage but there are no facts to support the "marketing hype". What we do know is that Musky will seek to attack their prey in mid-body. A mid-body attack makes a 'fixed position' tail hook less likely to be part of a 'hook-up'. This article gives you a step by step to try it for yourself. The Top Raider and the Rumbler use a neat modification to the tail hook. It is a little trick borrowed from other lure manufacturers and many of the older Musky anglers. I thought that you might find this simple lure modification of some interest. The Problem Whenever you throw a lure such as a bucktail, spinner or almost any surface lure, the hook at the tail end of the lure is NOT in the position for optimum hooking. If you look at the lure shown here, you can see that the tail hook is at a 90 degree angle to the ‘retrieve plane’ of the lure. Regardless of how fast you retrieve your lure, the tail hook will never be in-line with the body of the lure.

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