When swinging for anadramous fish, we really like fishing flies with trailer hooks. Whether tied on tubes or ‘articulated’ style, flies rigged with a trailer hook offer a number of advantages over flies tied on a traditional long shank streamer hook. However, there’s a lot of debate over the best trailer hook out there. In…
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hooks
Angler’s Image Magnetic Hook Boxes
We fish a lot of tube flies for everything from salmon to trout. We think they offer a number of advantages over a traditional long shank fly, one of those advantages being the ability to quickly change out a dull or bent hook without changing flies. However, the size stinger hook suitable for salmon is not…
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Removing a Hook From Your Skin
If you fish often enough, it’s only a matter of time before you are faced with having to remove a hook from either yourself or a fellow angler. Safely removing a hook is actually quite simple, but we’ve found that many anglers do not know how, or are unsure of the method they’ve heard of…
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The Tool Every Angler Should Have On Them (But Probably Doesn’t)
For the most part, fly fisherman are gear heads.. and we’re certainly no exception! The amount of gadgets and gizmos on the market for today’s techie fly fisherman are endless. However, we are always surprised with the number of guests we fish with who have everything imaginable in their vest or pack EXCEPT a hook…
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Keep Your Hooks Sharp
Spencer Dixon was a first-year guide at Alaska West this year, and everybody who met him was blown away by his skill, his work ethic, his enthusiasm and his fishiness. Turns out Spencer can write too! Here’s the first what we hope will be a long series of posts from him. Thanks, Spencer! The Importance…
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Bulk Hooks
Big fish. Big water. Bigger grabs. You know you’re gonna go through more than a few hooks when fishing deep for salmon and steelhead. Here’s why we like to buy in bulk for rigging tube and stinger-style flies.: Cost savings. While the average cost-per-hook price is relatively the same for hooks purchased in 25 or 100…
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What’s Your Favorite Trailer Hook?
Look, we know you steelhead and salmon types are a bunch of opinionated…well, we know you’re opinionated. That’s OK – we are too. We want to hear your opinions on a topic that’s near and dear to the hearts of those of us who swing articulated and/or tube flies – what’s your favorite trailer hook?…
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Try Fishing Smaller Hooks
For years the ‘standard’ hook sizes used in the pursuit of anadromous fish on swung flies were pretty darned big. 2/0 and 3/0 were ‘king hooks’ and 1/0 and 1 were ‘steelhead hooks’. In recent years many anglers we respect have been fishing hooks that are quite a bit smaller – 1 and 2 for…
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