Red hooks

Hey guys, I’m trying to get a Christmas list put together. Do you guys think red hooks in walleye fishing catch more fish? I once heard chase parsons say they definitely catch more fish. Do you guys think this is true? I will be starting to pour my own jigs this winter. Just trying to decide wether to get red hooks for them or not? Tia

Red hooks simulate blood so you will catch more fish with them. At the same time, red line ‘disappears’ just a few inches below the surface, so you will catch more fish…….lol

I can honestly say I have never once seen a day where I could honestly attribute a single extra bite to a red hook over any other hook.

I can’t recall off the top of my head the exact order, but reds are one of the first colors to disappear and blues are among the last to disappear.

That is one of the reasons the deep ocean waters look blue. Living plants and coral reefs lose much of their color with out using a flash. The flash will light up the reds and yellows.

In very clear water or when fishing shallow, there may be an advantage to red hooks. Beyond that, the red will NOT disappear, it will just look the same as a black hook.

Red hooks on jigs do look kind of cool, but IMHO I would not pay extra for them as far as their fish attracting capabilities.

The black nickel hooks are sharper out of the box than any other color of hooks and that should be the deciding factor. The red will brown out at 4 feet and look like any other hook beyond that. Red hooks are also the least sharp of the hooks out of the box.

So if red line disappears, red hooks disappear and
then
the fish can only see the minnow,
not the hook,
so they unknowingly
would then chomp red hook minnows before other colors.

“so they unknowingly
would then chomp red hook minnows before other colors.”

Doubtful color comes into play since everything will be a neutral color.

I’ve had days where red hooks will catch the only fish, and that’s on live bait rigs with 2 hooks within 4-6″ from each other, separate minnows. But never any noticeable difference when it comes to jigs.

Thanks for the replies guys! I took Tom’s advice and am going with eagle claw lil nasty 500 series in black nickel

While it is certainly hard to quantify whether or not red hooks make a difference in the number of bites or fish you catch, there is one factor here that has not been mentioned. That would be what the fish see vs what humans see.
And although that red colored hook may look black down there to us, I’m still not so sure anyone knows what the fish see. Especially walleyes and saugers which seem to have quite a bit better vision than we do under water.
The color spectrum they see for one, is not the same as ours. If I remember correctly, we have a large color spectrum than walleyes & saugers but that doesn’t mean they don’t see certain colors within there spectrum much better than we do.

As for those red hooks, count me in the group of people who have had days where despite the fact that we were fishing well beyond where the color of the lure or hook should no longer matter, it certainly appeared as though it did on that particular day.

To go a step further on this Joel, I am not certain that they don’t see different “intensities” of white black and grey with the grey area being colors other than black or white. How a color as we see it reflects light [how intense the reflection is] I think determines what they see. And I think that different fish see the color intensities different from specie to specie.

I don’t mean to imply that fish won’t hit on a red hook. I am saying though that most of the time red isn’t going to be a positive influence on whether they hit. Every dog has his day and yes red hooks have thier’s.

boos1906 wrote:

Thanks for the replies guys! I took Tom’s advice and am going with eagle claw lil nasty 500 series in black nickel

The “little nastys” are one fine hook. I have been using them thru the fall and early winter fishing in open water and they perform wonderfully. They are the sharpest out-of-the-box hook I have used in all my years of jig casting.

The thing that really strikes me as simply being to much of a co-incidence, is when we replace the front, bronze treble hook of a shad rap with a red treble hook.
On many occasions, the majority of the fish caught on that crank will be hooked on the front, red treble hook.
It happens to often for it to be a co-incidence, so regardless of whether its shades of gray or outright red that they see, the end result appears to be that they do actually see something different than we do and they are targeting that specific “red” part of the lure.
In situations like these, changing out the front treble on a crank bait to a red hook is an easy choice.