Fish Sniffer On Demand Digital Edition Issue 3620 September 15-30, 2017 | Page 29

SALTWATER
VOL.36 • ISS. 20
27
Sept. 15 - 30, 2017
The Battle of the Trailer Hooks –
The O’Shaughnessy Vs. Siwash
T
and that is this hook works best with
wo styles of hooks have
“regular” fish with “regular” mouth
become the most popular for
hanging on the back of artificial
structures. Salmon do not fit into this
lures, the O’Shaughnessy and the Si- category.
wash. Often dressed with a pinch of
The Siwash hook must have been
white bucktail and some-
the product of much ex-
times with chicken hackle
perience and experimen-
or simply plain, the single
tation.
hook has replaced the
While an O’Shaugh-
treble hook on a number
nessy hook can and does
of lures, mostly on spoons
hook and land salmon,
and jigs, and sometimes as
those clever rascals of
a tail hook on wooden or
the Pacific Northwest
plastic plugs.
designed a hook that does
One manufacturer of
a fantastic job in hooking
hand carved cedar plugs,
and holding those frisky
Phase II lures, has been
salmon with their notori-
by Steve
featuring a bucktailed sin-
ously soft mouths. Instead
“Hippo”Lau of looking like the “J”
gle hook as a trailer hook
on their products for years.
of the O’Shaughnessy
Dick Fincher, who carves these lures design, the Siwash looks more like a
back in Westport, Connecticut, has
deep “U”.
had great success using a bucktailed
When it hooks a salmon, it can grab
O’Shaughnessy hook as a trailer
a whole lot of meat. That is one of
hook.
the drawbacks of the Siwash design,
O’Shaughnessy hooks are one
that the gap is so large that instead of
of the oldest and one of the most
penetrating the mouth structure of a
successful hoo