Thread: Trebles vs. Singles

What would be best trebles or single hooks on lures? And why?

What species are you fishing for? If you're saying, "Are lures with treble hooks better than lures with single hooks", again - it depends on what you're fishing for, what the lure is that you're using to imitate the prey item. A king mackerel lure is going to be one that looks like a cigar minnow, so it will naturally have treble hooks. A Hopkins-styled spoon (for Spanish) usually comes with a treble hook, but you could replace it with a single hook if you wanted to. Are you keeping the fish? Then keep the treble on the spoon, because the fish is less likely to come unpinned. Generally speaking, it's not as important to use a lure that has EITHER treble or single hooks, but to choose one that looks like what that species (the one you're going after) is feeding on.

Opinions be damned, but if you hook a fish over the jaw with a single siwash hook that sucker is not getting off. Trebles may have three points to them but the gaps of the adjacent hooks can be used as leverage by a fish on jumps and runs.

Treble hook is 3x the odds of a point being buried though.

Striped bass plugs (handmade wooden plugs of 3-5 oz for surf casting) often have one or two belly trebles and MAY have a treble or a single swash (with bucktail or not) on the tail. Bluefish are tail-striking which may account for that single hook, plus it acts as rudder so the thinking goes.

Single hook replacements on diamond jigs, or other long-cast lures, supposedly fold to the body to reduce drag and prevent wind-milling.

You would think that subbing swash for treble would be stronger (why some people do it on offshore plugs), but now one gets into changing a lure's action.

Just curious really I'm gonna get a few teaser hooks that are singles to try on a few lures. I understand that the treble is 3x's more likely to hook a fish on a swipe, but wasn't sure if the teaser style treble would effect the action of the said lure as opposed to a single hook teaser?