After fishing with thousands of products, you occasionally stumble across a few that make your life a lot easier. One of those products for me this year was the Owner Weighted Twistlock Light hooks.
I won’t lie though, I was turned on to this hook by another pretty good angler. He’s more famous for a soft plastic bait than the hooks he uses, buy Gary Yamamoto shared his hooks with me while on his ranch last year. While weighted hooks with screw lock keepers are hardly new to bass fishing, this one really surprised me with its effectiveness.
Here are the attributes I think anglers will find interesting about these hooks and how I used them in my fishing over the course of several months:
- Weight distribution like wacky rig
- Gap opens at bend not at head
- CPS Twistlock centers perfectly
- Fewer torn up baits
- Perfect for other plastics too
No more wacky rig for me
Yep. I said it. Wacky rig purists might roll their eyes after reading that subhead. But hear me out. A wacky rig in my opinion is the best way to present a soft stickbait like a Yamamamoto Senko, YUM Dinger, or a Zoom Fluke Stick. But on Gary’s advice, I switched over to this hook with Senkos.
The results were very good immediately. I was able to skip the bait under docks, around bushes, grass and other shallow cover. And it stayed hooked up, didn’t tear up the baits and present the bait quietly to shallow bass and the hookups were great.
I was a little worried about the lighter wire of these hooks but I caught some 5-pounders this spring with no issue. I liked fishing it on 10 to 12-pound fluorocarbon. Sometimes 15 or 17-pound around thicker heavier cover. But the light line worked really well with the 1/8-ounce Owner Weighted Twistlock Light Hooks in 5/0 or 6/0.
Angled design yields good hookups
The angle of the hook keeps it narrow at the head so it comes through cover easily and then it opens up at the bend just behind the weight. So you get a much bigger bite when the fish bites down and pushes the plastic away from the hook point. This results in a better gap for better hooksets.
I was able to reel set on most of the fish I caught this year and get them in the boat. I like that they chomp down on the bait, swim off and you just wind down into them and drive the hook home. Again a very good design.
The perfect spring lock keeper
The Owner CPS (Center Pin Spring) Twistlock perfectly threads the plastic onto the keeper so that it is centered in the nose of the bait. The bait gets rigged perfectly straight every time like this which if you fish soft stickbaits much you know this is imperative for a natural presentation.
Baits last a bit longer
Sticksbaits notoriously tear up when fish bite. After a few fish it’s onto the next bait. It did seem that with this hook and keeper that my stickbaits had a bit longer shelf life in a bass’s living room. I will say that the Zoom Fluke Stick on this rig gave me a bunch of bass on every bait. I also had some good success with Swimming Senkos, and Strike King Caffeine Shad casting to isolated targets with them not getting torn up in cover.
Speaking of those other plastics. The weight works well for a wacky rig because in all honesty, a stickbait is not dead center weighted. The head is usually a bit thicker and the tail has more of a taper so the weight needs to be more towards the head. So it’s good for that. But it also fits nicely under swimbaits, topwater toads, and soft jerkbaits.
So I would definitely suggest getting a few packs in different sizes. If you fish clear water, especially in the spring when fish get notoriously shallow around the spawn, this can be a great way to present subtle natural baits to skittish fish.
You can find these hooks here on Tacklewarehouse.com as well as other retailers that carry Owner hooks.
