Fishing tackle has become more about personal preference in the last decade or so. Any of us who spend more than our fair share of free time pursuing fish like to put our own customization on our fishing lures. Swapping out hooks has been the staple on hard baits for decades but with terminal tackle, you’ve been somewhat saddled with “whatever” hook comes in the jighead, and often it’s the cheapest one they can buy in bulk.
Freedom Tackle introduced a line of fishing tackle that seeks to give anglers their own preference of hooks. Several of us at Wired2fish have been playing with their jigheads and I’ve specifically been playing with the Freedom Tackle Hydra heads.
Specifications on the Hydra
The Hydra swimbait heads come in sizes from 1/8 ounce all the way up to 1 ounce. They offer them in very good looking patterns. But the real draw to these heads is that the hook is independent from the head and you can replace the hook and put on any hook you like in a matter of seconds.
The head on the Hydra has a patented, stainless-steel, 300-pound spin lock wire design built into the center of a brass echo chamber inside of the head. It’s not just a big hunk of metal on the end of a hook that is painted. They incorporated sound, customization and good aesthetics into these heads.
With this design the head and hook hinge independently so the fish can’t get leverage to twist or throw the lure free on the fight.
Our experiences with the heads
We’ve managed to catch several good bass through the fall and winter on the Hydra heads. Wired2Fish video producer Ryan DeChaine has caught numerous bass in Minnesota fishing them around grass on natural lakes with his favorite swimbaits, while I’ve been using them out deep fishing around current and main lake structure and mostly rocky features on TVA reservoirs.
We’ve both found the hooks that come with the heads adequate for most applications, but if you’re going to fish them with heavy duty rods and/or braided line, you might consider changing the hooks to super-line type hooks.
I’ve actually had a lot of success taking and attaching 5/0 and 6/0 flipping hooks with the big keepers and putting a dab or two of super glue on the keepers before I thread my swimbait onto the hook. I will often push the swimbait up snug to the head. I don’t necessarily want a lot of free-hinging wiggle when I’m fishing the swimbait out deep. But I like that when I hook a fish, they head and hook will work in conjunction to keep the fish hooked up.
You can check out the colors and size options at TackleWarehouse.com as well as their website freedomlures.com. There are some good videos on there that will show the heads underwater.
Check out some of our catches on the Hydra heads the last few months.
