Sickles or round bend

Sickles for crappie for me. The reservoirs I fish have very little woody cover, so snagging is not as big of an issue. Sickles are extremely sharp and almost always get the fish in the hard palate in the roof of the.mouth, instead of landing in the thin membrane of the lips. When I switched to sickles, my hookup percentage stayed the same, but I lost fewer fish due to the hook tearing out.

The sickle hooks made for crappie jigs are NOT designed for salmon and steelhead. Knocking them for breaking on salmon is like renting a compact car and complaining it takes 10 trips across town to move your apartment when you should have rented a truck in the first place. There are heavy wire sickles, but they are much harder to find. For salmon and steelhead, I use round bends, either Mustad 32833BLNs or Gamekatsu heavy wires.

I use both, round bend w/the hook bent out w/fishing a weedless jig or when tightlining. I use sickles for this too. My preference is sickles because of the wider gap & sharp point. They are right, you do seem to catch more in the room of the mouth. Unless you're going weedless, you have to be careful casting around brush, bigger gap and sharper hook is a magnet for limbs.

For tightling, I primarily use round because they don't get hung in the brush as often due to a smaller gap.

I've never broke a sickle on salmon or steelhead, use the heavier wire ones and have never bent one out let alone broke one. I just lost more fish on sickle JIG hooks. Sickle octopus was another story. But I may have a remedy for that, bead and pin jigs with a trailer tied on instead of using sickle jig hooks. Salmon and steelhead run hard and shake their heads like a wet dog shaking. Same with trout, for some reason almost every single trout I hooked on sickle jigs shook the hook in a jump or head shake close to the dock.

They are good hooks, like I said, I can't say anything about using them crappie or other pan fish, just what I have experience with catching fish. not for lack of trying, 120 hours on a supposed awesome crappie lake last year and didn't hook a single crappie or gill or perch on a jig. Trout yes, but lost them on anything but a round bend jig hook.

new to the crappie fishing thing...but have poured my own heads for years...bought round ball molds poured with the round bend hooks (all I had) at the time..tried the sickle...we long toll...noticed #1 super sharp...2nd...noticed we were having less fish come off as we reeled in...that is all I use now! Sickle all the way!!! can't go wrong

Sickles I started using about the same time I started tying which is about 6 years now and
They just out do regular bend hooks. Not just for me either as have got lots of customers that had never tried them before and probably 98% if them are impressed and fish them now full time!

Poured hooks for many years and always use litewirehooks with round bends. These hooks are supersharp and if you get hung, many times you get your hook/lead and jig back to catch another fish. I rather spend time fishing than tieing on hooks. The way business has been this year........many fishermen agree with me.

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Originally Posted by lightwirehooker

Poured hooks for many years and always use litewirehooks with round bends. These hooks are supersharp and if you get hung, many times you get your hook/lead and jig back to catch another fish. I rather spend time fishing than tieing on hooks. The way business has been this year........many fishermen agree with me.

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I have not had the chance to fish with yours yet just because I have not been yet, but do plan on trying them really soon. I am really wanting to see how they do here, soon I need to go. It was over 70 here yesterday and over 80 today, but colder tomorrow. However the water temp has to be getting close, very close!

Sickle all the way for me. Have not had any problems straighteng them out, no more than round bend.

#1 Sickles on every swimbait jighead or jig for me also!

NightProwler make a killer WEEDLESS Sickle Jighead

At first I wasn't sure about the sickle hooks. RonDon sent me some jigs with them on. Once I started using them, I really like them.