Search the Community

Been following this forum for years but never took the time to contribute. However, a recent experience to share might be useful to a lot our saltwater tyers. Using barbless hooks for your flies in freshwater is a no-brainer. The barbless products on the market today are great and more hook models are showing up all the time. My favorite is now the Firehole Stick line from Firehole Outdoors in Bozeman, Montana. They've probably got the best barbless streamer hooks on the market in the models 718, 811 and 839. The wide gap design really improves hooking and hook retention. Recently, I took a 10-day trip to the Sarasota-Tampa region where I have my Caribbean 12 Angler kayak stashed with a relative. Since barbless (pinched down) hooks are recommended for trout and snook to protect their tender mouths, I decided to try out some saltwater patterns tied on 718s and 811s. The hooks are not designed specifically for saltwater application, but the black nickel coating held up well on the flies I used during the trip. Indeed, on trout and snook the hooks held well and were easy to remove. I don't think I missed any more fish than usual using barbless hooks. I didn’t wash any of the flies after use during the trip and after ten days, there was no sign of corrosion, even though several flies went to battle with big 5-7 pound Bluefish and their gnashing teeth. The only fly type that I found the hooks unsuitable for were bend backs and bottom bouncers. 811s broke most of the time when bending and on both models the black nickel coating fractured if the bend was successful. So if you want to try tying your saltwater patterns on barbless hooks, you might want to give the Firehole Stick 718s and 811s a try. This is my "Identity Complex Seatrout fly on a #1 Model 811 Firehole Stick--Go to fly for Speckled Seatrout on sinktip in deep potholes. Here's a passel of saltwater patterns all tied on Firehole Sticks.