Shak Muscles

Nice! I guess for durability I'll just have to test it out myself. I know Wayne P. is big on wacky rigging with shrink tubing. It does work for people

Is a heat shrink tube better than using an o-ring? I have been using o-rings and they work really well, I get about 6-7 bass on average per senko rather than 2 or so without the o-ring. But I was wondering if the heat shrink tubes are better since the hook goes in perpendicular etc. How does it work? Because if the hook is going through the worm anyway then how does the tube help conserve the worm? Does it last as long as it will with an o-ring? And will the tube slide up and off the hook and onto the line when a fish is on just like an o-ring?

Yeah I use senkos and other sinking baits primarily so I prefer fluoro over mono. AMD I think I'll just get regular line because my line usually doesn't get beat up a lot. I just thought that the leader material had other advantages other than durability.

Wow that's pretty cheap for aluminum pliers!

I have been using braid with fluorocarbon line as my leader, but I'm going out to get some heavier lb test fluoro. I was wondering if I should get fluorocarbon leader line instead of just the regular line. The leader line is much more expensive and you only get spools of like 30 yards or so. Is it worth it to get fluoro leader line? What are the advantages/disadvantages?

I suspect that you are also a much better fisherman than your friend!

I'll use the wd-40 since I have some at home! I'll probably spray it once a month or so since I go fishing a lot. Is it a good idea to wash your pliers at home with tap water too after every fishing trip? If so I will do that too.

How do you guys prevent rust on your fishing pliers? Right now I just go fishing with regular pliers and they got so rusty I can't even remove a gut hook anymore. When I get fishing pliers I assume they will rust too. How do you prevent that?

How did you get permission to fish a few of those quarries?

Is it considered trespassing to fish in a quarry? There's a quarry a few miles from me and its got 2 nice looking ponds in it. I know people fish quarry's but I'm not sure if we are actually allowed to. I see construction trucks down there so I think people are still working on in the quarry. I also have no clue how to get down there, but I've heard that these quarries hold some big bass! Are we allowed to fish down there and would those construction guys mind? And also how do you even get down there?

@J Francho Wow, you're right. They did spit it out when they found out that it was a lure. Maybe I'm too slow a reacting and they spit it out before I set the hook. That was a fun video!

Sometimes if I set the hook right when I feel the tap I come up empty, so I let them take it in. Sometimes they are just holding on to the tip of my senko and I set the hook and all I come back with is an empty hook, senko gone. So I like to wait a bit, not long just a second or so till I feel the second or third tap and then I set the hook.

So I was out yesterday on the lake and I was using my newly bought owner wacky hooks 2/0 and they were great! I caught 11 bass and only missed 1 that I can remember. I actually felt confident that the fish won't fall off the hook which is rarely the case with me. Half the time I did a sweeping hookset and the other half I let the bass take it for a second and then did an aggressive upward hookset and both seemed to work just fine. I feel like the key if you want to do a more agressive hookset rather than a sweeping hookset is that you should let the fish take the worm all the way so that there isn't a risk of losing the fish by having the hook pop out of its mouth during the hookset. I let the fish take it for 1-2 seconds after i felt the nudge nudge nudge on my line and then set it upwards with decent power and the fish were hooked so good that they had no chance of coming off. For me personally the reel set didn't work for me because I ended up gut hooking both fish I tried a reel set on. And since the hook was so small it was a pain to remove. I could have been doing it wrong though, I might not have reacted fast enough.

Are there any other wacky hooks that allow hooksets? I had bought 5/0 gamakatsu octopus hooks and they were way too thick. I felt like they wouldn't even penetrate the fish's mouth I missed a ton of fish on them. I was too scared to buy a smaller than 5/0 size for the octopus hook because it looked too small. Maybe I'll have to try the gamakatsu finesse wide gap hook.

Ok maybe I should phrase the question differently.. Would a decently hard hookset hurt your hookup percentage? I ask this because I love setting the hook. Its a part of fishing which gets my adrenaline pumping. It's that GOTCHA! moment that I absolutely love. I don't think I would have nearly as much joy with a reel set. So would settings the hook hurt your chances like it does with a circle hook? Or is it fine but not just not necessary?

How do you guys set the hook with a owner wacky hook?(or any wacky style hook) Do you set it vertical and hard or just a reel set or a slight sweep motion? I fish my senko's vertical so I find it easy setting the hook upwards. I usually yank decently hard since I'm pretty used to it but many times the hook pops out of the fish's mouth. Sometimes it will seem like its on for a second or two and then its gone. I'm switching to these wacky hooks because I heard they have a high hookup percentage and I want to maximize it by doing it right!

Good to know! That's what I was most nervous about when looking at how small the hook was.

With these wacky owner hooks, is it necessary to set the hook or are they like circle hooks where its better to just reel in. And also is 1/0 too small to land a 5lb+ bass? It just seems very very small since I'm used to using my 4/0 EWG hooks to wacky(since I used them to t-rig and I was too lazy to get wacky hooks) Would you guys say that wacky hooks are better than EWG hooks? because to be honest I find that EWG hooks work fine when wacky rigging

Ok so I just checked on google maps and apparently its only 12 miles away. Looking at how bad other people have it, maybe I should just haul ass and make my way to the store! It's only a 30 min drive, although it feels like a lot more.

Where can you buy owner wacky hooks other than online? And I'm talking about the normal 1/0 ones not the weedless ones. And where would you get it the cheapest? The nearest bass pro to me is like 20 miles away so I don't want to go there to get those hooks. And I've checked in Walmart but it wasn't there, they only had Gamakatsu and Eagle Claw. Dicks seems to have discontinued selling fishing tackle because recently I haven't seen any fishing stuff in their stores. Any place that sells them in stores other than bass pro. I'm in Illinois btw. Also, is there a point to get weedless wacky hooks? Do they lessen hook-up ratio and are they worth the extra $?

And you can get this 5 minute epoxy from a hardware store correct? Its not some special fishing thingy that you can only get at bass pro right?

I think I'll just go with the hot glue sticks because I don't want it to be permanent just in case I want to replace it again. But I was originally wondering if just regular bottled glue would work, but now I'm thinking that it may be too weak?

I will be replacing my rod tip top soon because the ceramic ring thingy got knocked out. So I was wondering if you actually need tip top adhesive or will regular liquid glue hold just fine?

@Wayne P. So you would say that you have to set the hook with the octopus hook right? And with my situation I would need to set even harder so I can get penetration?

Do you need to set the hook for an octopus hook or is it like the circle hook where you just reel in? And if you do need to set the hook how hard do you need to set it? I just got 5/0 octopus hooks(yeah I know way too big) and I was using them with o-ring wacky senko's and I missed like 5+ bass so I'm wondering if I'm doing things wrong. I also run the hook parallel to the senko rather than perpendicular because of the o-ring. Next time I will be getting Owner 1/0 hooks. It's just that I went to the walmart nearest to me and they only had the octopus hooks. Next time I will go to Bass Pro and get the owner hooks for sure. Is it really necessary to make the hook perpendicular or does it not matter much. Could it be the difference between me missing or catching the biggest bass of my life?