Drennan do a big range of hooks and as with all tackle it's a personal choice thing, their hooks are generally sharp(though a few patterns lose their points easily), your plain specimen barbless would be next to useless on my small river barbel fishing, on float or lead, so for my fishing life revolves around four or five patterns, depending on fish being targeted and line strengths, rods etc, the hooks you use are a good hook, but some Drennan hooks are poor, for me(and Gordon obviously) anyway, the red maggot hook is as weak as pi$$ and opens on a whim, a friend swears by them(as did Simon, I gave him a few packets) so I gave them a go, I went trotting one morning, Normark Titan 2000 and 4lb line and an 18 red maggot, first trot the float sunk and I hooked a decent perch, landed it a fish 2lb plus as I remember, upon looking at the hook in the fishes lip I remember thinking that it held up well during a decent fight, then I went to disgorge it, that was it, it was so soft the hook buckled under the slightest of pressure and ended up the most incredible shape, I tied a new hook on and several trots later I was into my target, a chub, I landed it, God knows how, the hook was straight, only the barb held it, I have used very fine wire hooks for squat and bloodworm fishing in my match fishing days, but nowadays I have a massive gap between medium wire to forged strong hooks.
The Drennan carbon chub or red bream are hooks that aren't heavy wire like superspades, but are very strong without being too heavy in the wire which would ruin presentation, some think this is a myth, but sadly it isn't....
