straight eye vs down eye

[ScottP]

The original Clouser Minnow was tied on a Mustad 3906B, a turned-down eye that became a turned-up eye when the weighted dumbell eyes were attached. Gave a good up-down jigging action that the Susquehanna smallmouths Mr. Clouser was fishing for seemed to like. When the fly made the inevitable transition to saltwater, I don't think there were many TDE eye hooks, so most of us just tied them on straight hooks like the 3407 or 34007. Doesn't seem that the switch to the straight hook has diminished the effectiveness of the fly because they catch just about any fish that swims, and I tie most of my freshwater ones now on the 3366. I have used some of the Eagle Claw 413 jig hooks (60 degree bend) for a few peacock bass Clouser variations; don't know if it makes much difference, but the hooks are inexpensive and the peacocks like them.

Regards,
Scott

[JeffHamm]

You know, this is one of those things that just begs for an experiment. In areas where one is allowed multiple flies, tie on two flies of the same size and pattern (one on the point, and one on the dropper) but one has a turned down eye and one has a straight eye, and fish for an hour. Then, switch positions, fish another hour, and so on. Do this for a number of days in a row, each day starting with the opposite set up from the day before (ie. if today I started with straight eye on the point, tomorrow I start with down eye on the point) to ensure any differences are due to time of day effects (you must start fishing at the same time each day).

Keep track of which fly was taken for all fish brought to hand; strikes might be harder to tell and so the data would be more suspect, and in the end, getting more hits but of a poorer quality (fish throw it more often) might not really be considered "better".

Then, calculate what proportion of fish were caught on the down eyed fly and what proportion were calculated on the straight eyed fly. If there is no real difference, then you would expect things to be about 50/50 (and there are ways to determine if the observed scores are likely to be different from that expected ratio too!).

If one style does appear better, then repeat the whole excercise with up eyed hooks.

If you are allowed 3 flies, then you could have 3 flies of the same size and pattern, but one up, one down, and one straight eye. Mixing up the positions gets more complicated since there are 6 different configurations, but that just requires more fishing to sort out the issues, with no difference resulting in an equal number of fish caught at all positions.

Now, just because it does, or does not, make a difference with one type of fly (let's say spiders), doesn't mean eye position wouldn't make a difference for, say, dries, or nymphs, or winged wets, or streamers, or ...

That's a lot of experiments to conduct, which requires a lot of fishing to be done.

Who said science isn't fun?

- Jeff

[Buddy Sanders]

Jeff,

Please let us all know your results .

Buddy

[Clay]

I thought of clousers right away and how I tie them all on straight eye'd hooks. I also thought of small dry flies, I use a TMC100 in sizes down to 14 or 16 but anything smaller than an 18 gets a 101 just because the gap is so small. It doesn't really matter because after you are around a little while you will have both anyhow. Throw in some upturn Salmon hooks while you're at it so things just look classic. Life is all good.

[WarrenP]

I think Buddy has the right "thoughts" on this. I feel it means more to the person tying the flies than it does to the fish. The only comment I can make is that I feel that it would make more of a difference on a dry fly pattern than any other pattern because on very small dry flies the weight of the tippet on a down turned eye hook would have a tendency to pull the front of the dry fly down and would affect the floatation of the dry fly.

If your question is will the angle of the hook eye affect the hook-up ratio, I do not think so, but, I do feel that a long shank hook provides the fish a better chance to dislodge the hook while fighting. It makes little difference if the fish is lip hooked, but, if the hook point is past the lip and half of the hook shank with the hook eye is protruding from the fish's mouth, than the long shank of the hook provides the fish a lever to assist with unhooking the hook when pressure is applied at an angle during the fight. With shorter hook shanks, the tippet is against the fish's mouth and will not provide a lever. Just my thoughts and nothing more....

[redietz]

Just adding a different viewpoint to what Buddy Sanders has said we might want to consider why the hook eyes were turned up, straight or turned down in the first place. I do not claim to be an expert here but history seems to indicate that turned-down and turned-up eyes addressed tying a gut snell to the hook shank with the snell being carried straight forward through the eye. Even earlier, hooks had no eyes where the gut was lashed directly to the hook shank.
With the development of plastic for tippets in the mid 1900s the bent eyes were not neede any more. My discussion with a hook manufacturer several years ago confirmed this and it was added that the up and down bent eyes were only continued because fly tiers and users traditionally expected them.
Many tiers find tying with straight eye hooks makes it easier to finish off a fly head. (including trimming Muddlers)
Straight and turned -up eyes on very small hooks were preferred because they did not further reduce the small hook gap.

You're (mostly) correct. It wasn't so much the gut snell -- you could do that with an eyeless hook -- but the preferred knot in the gut era was the turle knot, which passes through the eye and the knot is on the hook shank. Unfortunately, the turle knot doesn't hold very well with nylon leaders (and I suppose it's even worse with fluoro-carbon) so it isn't used any more. We use TDE and TUE hooks for the same reason we still measure tippet size in "X" designation -- it's a holdover from gut.

[CoachBob]

This site http://www.northarkansasflyfisher.org/Tech2.html shows how to use knots to get a vertical or horizontal fly presentation. The connection to this thread is that the knot connection is different for different types of hook eyes. It's worth reading.

[Wes]

I've used the turle knot successfully for skating steelhead flys using larger (0x-2x) tippets especially for up eye hooks. in this case there is a difference in fly action. up eyed hooks will pull the nose of the skating fly into the water.

[DaleW]

Saw this thread some time back and it caught my interest. the only up turn eye experience I've had is with larger streamers for salmon and steel head. Hook sizing 2, 1/0 and 2/0 ~

In my area everything is warm water and salt water fishing. Every so often I do get to the mountains for some trout fishing but that's a long haul from home base and can only do so on rare occasions. As for the warm water there are several marl pits around these parts, good for L/M bass and bream (bluegill). Plus there's the Waccamaw River, same kind of fish except black crappie added to the mix - There are cat fish, too, but that's not my pursuit, but happy if I "run into one"!

Recently decided to try tying out some patterns using smaller up turn hooks. Ordered out a few of the Dailchi 1740 up eye nymph hooks, size 10.

Tied up a few nymphs (I suppose kinda down the lines of a Pheasant Tail), a few streamers (hey, maybe close to a Black-nosed Dace) ....AND a very few soft hackle wets (which work pretty good in the marl pits).

Caught a few fish, but more importantly, I liked the action of streamers and nymphs in the river much better then the straight and down turn eye hooks I had been using. Perhaps this is due to my fly tying "technique"?

Plan on tying up a few more variations, and for sure, keeping some up turn eyed hooks in the ready.