I went out to find a straight eye hook for a new streamer pattern. That was almost as bad as finding “one honest man”. Ringed eye (straight eye) hooks in my opinion will put your fly floating on an axis that best resembles a natural offering. The poor positioning of turned down eye can somewhat overcome problem.
My Question why do almost all fly hooks come with turned down eyes. Yes, I know there are hooks available with straight eyes, but they are few and far between
Does anyone know when and why everyone started to manfacture less ringed eye and more down eye hooks??
On some hooks that are not super brittle, I have had no problem with straightening the eye with a pair of dykes. Just squeeze it on line with the shank. I leave a slight downward turn of the eye feeling it is best not to over stress the steel. I have never had a problem with a hook after doing this, but I have had them break during the process. It is probably best to buy them with a ring eye, but in a bind this has worked for me for trout flies.
Hi Tom, I don’t know date wise, but hooks with up and down eyes predates straight eyed ones, the hooks were still designed to have a straight pull from the tippet by mean of threading the line through the eye from the front of the hook and tying onto the hook shank itself. See the link below
if i want a straight eye which is most of the timei will use a (tiemco 9395)which is 3x heavy and 4x long. also the (daiichi x point 1750)(mustad 9764) (orvis 0167)(partridge d3stf)or a gamakatsu s11s-4l2h
hope this helps
Hi Tom, I have been bothered by this same question for years. My conclusion as to why we see the majority of hooks with TDEs is plain inertia. With the old snelled flies a TDE was ideal since it allowed the snell to be tied on the hook shank and then, when led throught the eye it would in direct alignment as desired. Years ago I politely asked Mustad about my assumption and was told that the idea had merit.
It was hinted that we will see more and more new hooks with straight ring eyes to avoid the “beak” look.
If more of us bring up the subject maybe the change will be faster.
I have been tying spiders (softhackles) on s/e hooks lately, I like them as they are the
closest you can get to the old snelled hooks, here are some examples from my site. http://www.dtnicolson.dial.pipex.com/page54.html
It is possible to get s/e streamer hooks as well, Cabelas have Mustad s/e hooks.
p.s. Here is an old type of wet fly tied on a s/e hook.
It is a simple fly, tie in the hen hackle as a normal softhackle, two turns, then pull all the fibres upwards,
using the tying thread fix them in the upwards position, then dub on the Hare’s Ear.
Any hackle or dubbing produces quite a lot of variations.
