Back in October I visited the Tackle & Guns show hosted by DHP and held every year at Stoneleigh Park. It’s a trade only show, but an excellent opportunity to have a look at what is very new in the world of fishing tackle and not yet in the shops.
Whilst wandering around I got accosted by a Dutchman who asked how long it took me to tie on a hook and was I interested in new ideas. “Watch.” he said as he took a short length of braid he was holding and a hook and after a few flicks of his hands, the hook was attached to the line. It’s not magic, but was it an illusion, something only he could do after years of practice?
No. The hook is one of his design, a new hook that he hopes will soon sell like hot cakes over here. The man was Jules Beckman Lapré and his idea is to add a (what I call) capstan on the back of the hook’s shank and instead of a standard eye, use a half closed pig-tail bend.
The idea is to use a loop of line by doubling the line over and fasten this around the small capstan with the lines coming towards you. Then by wrapping the line around the shank four times and lead it into the open end of the pig-tail eye, you’ve done it. All you need do now is to cut off the loose tag end.
My attempt. Easy!
It really is that simple.
“Ah,” he said “you may want a hair to hold the bait.” This part is not yet documented on his website, but here is my best description to accompany the pictures.
And now with a hair.
Double the line over and line it up against the hook to decide how long the hair (a loop now) will be (photo 1). Then take both strands of line behind the capstan (that’s between the capstan and the eye) and wrap it around the hook once (photo 2). Now wrap it in front of the capstan (between capstan and hook bend) once (photo 3) before returning to winding it 4 times (as before) upwards from capstan towards the pig-tail eye and through (photo4).
Now the loop you have formed provides a hair and it is solid. I have tied this with 80lbs braid on one of his massive 8/0 hooks and leaned on it with my full body weight and it is secure.
I’m always interested in new ideas and developments in tackle and this has a future, I believe. Of course it’s going to take a while to take off and it won’t suit every situation; for example I can’t see it taking over a carp angler’s rig board full of ready tied rigs. This is perhaps because each would be tied to perform a specific function and is as neat as the angler can make them and also they are tied in advance anyway, usually.
I see these hooks being used where the angler wants to rapidly change size of hook or from a straight hook to nylon to a having a hair say. A further benefit not immediately noticeable, is that the capstan help to hold a worm in place where many another hook need a piece of elastic attaching to the hook or something such as a rubber maggot.
It’s only fair to say that other than bench tests, I haven’t had much chance with these on the bank as yet due to the colder weather setting in. What I’d ideally like is a day with some obliging carp and then I can compare their hooking skills against other standard hooks. I will, though, stick out a second rod with an new hook on when conditions allow, just in case.
My only comments so far are that the Easy hooks seem slightly larger compared to our standard hooks, but that only means choosing a smaller Easy hook than you normally would so don’t just go off size numbers. The hooks work better for me with braid than mono, but once tied, both lines are securely tied. It’s also easy to untie the hook and retie with a smaller hook or different pattern, hair or no hair, this is something you just cannot do with a spade end hook or even a no-knot on a carp hook.
This video was made for the US market.
On the negative side, yet nothing to do with the hook itself, anglers are hard to persuade to use anything out of the ordinary, each has their favourites so even another hook pattern that comes out has to prove itself to those loyal to any brand/type. It’s a very hard market to crack and yet here we have a completely unique and very different way of tying on a hook, it’s going to be a hard uphill struggle to get anglers to change. They will need an instant sequence of catches of fish as soon as they put an Easy hook on their line and the fact that they didn’t get any bites (and wouldn’t have whatever the hook) won’t help.
I’m willing to give them a fair go though and see. One promising line of development is that Mustad, possibly the world’s largest manufacturer of hooks, will be making these for the company in future so they must be fairly confident in their future.
All that I can say for now is have a look at their website and feel free to comment in the attached thread as I’m sure any positive feedback will be taken on board and in the meantime, if I catch something monstrous on an Easy hook, you will hear about it.
