Spooning In The Weeds, Do you want to get your spoon into the thick growth that hungry pike love to hide out in?
In the early summer season there is no better place to find hungry Northerns than in the weeds. Spoons are without a doubt one of the single most effective lures available for catching hungry Pike. When you combine the two above ingredients, weeds and spoons, you instantly run into a problem, Spoons usually drag a treble hook behind them, along with 25 lbs of weeds that got caught up on it retrieving it through the weedy Pike bed.
There is a simple and effective solution to help combat this problem. Remove the weed catcher treble hook and install a single hook. A single hook doesn’t mean that you will eliminate al the weeds that your hook grabs, many of the weeds that get caught will slide off the hook or a jerk or two will remove them if they do not remove themselves.
When I first started to use single hooks on my spoons I was sure I would catch less fish and this simply isn’t so. I eliminate enough weed tangles that I actually get more strikes, therefore, more hook ups.
There are some reservoirs in Southern Alberta that become incredibly thick with weeds, so thick that they always seemed unfishable. Now with single hooks on my spoons I can fish in them with a fair amount of success, more success than I ever imagined. In these types of thick weeds I cast into the thinnest areas with Williams Wobblers and rip them high over the weeds as soon as it hits the water. This method is very effective on aggressive Northerns.
The hooks that you put on your spoons will be dependant on the size of the spoon. If you put a single hook on a spoon that is larger than the spoon itself, you are defeating the purpose. You need to use hooks that are narrower than the spoon so the point doesn’t poke out past the edges during retrieve, catching weeds all they way. Also circle style hooks seem to work better, the point points back towards the hook shank and doesn’t catch weeds as much as a regular J bend hook.
If you want to use regular hooks, you can make them weedless by attaching a small wire to the shaft of the hook and ending near the point of the hook. A wire large enough to repel weeds but small enough to collapse out of the way when a fish hits the spoon.
Good Luck and happy fishing!
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