Best Hooks for Kokanee Fishing

This article is inspired by the video put out by Spilt Milt Productions, which is available below and does a great walkthrough of the best hooks for kokanee fishing, and why you ought to consider upgrading your hooks. We did our own testing to see if the evaluation from Spilt Milt stands up

Hooks Are the Most Ignored Piece of the Kokanee Fishing Rig

Your hoochie or your lure attracts the fish, as does the dodger, but your hook determines if they’ll get caught after that. A good hook will hook into the fish when a kokanee strikes at your lure out of aggression, and it’ll stay hooked all the way to the boat.

Most people assume that most store bought lures should come with the best hooks for kokanee, but unfortunately that’s not always the case. Many of these lures come with a simple, cheap octopus hook. Don’t get me wrong, the octopus hook can and does catch fish, but its just not the best tool for the job. You can upgrade your hooks in your kokanee gear to improve your fishing.

Octopus hooks are the main go to for a lot of kokanee lures, but it isn’t the very best. If you’re hooking into a lot of kokanee and losing them, you may want to consider switching out your hooks. Octopus hooks have an eye that is bent backwards, away from the hook itself. This allows you to snell the hook very easily and cleanly, which certainly isn’t a bad thing. Octopus hooks are also supposed to be minimal and thin in order to be fairly natural in the water, which again, is a good thing for kokanee fishing.

The problem is that regular stock octopus hooks are often not sharp enough or have a thin enough wire, and there are also other hooks that, while similar to the Octopus, just have a slightly better shape for hooking and keeping a kokanee hooked. The goal of this article is to help you go from adequate or even good to great, and so you’ll have the best hooks on the market for kokanee fishing.

What Size Hooks are Best for Kokanee Fishing

For kokanee salmon, my go to hook size is usually a #4, but it can range from a #4 to a #1. A size 4 hook is .67″ long, and a 1 is just under an inch long. Fishing hook sizes can be a bit confusing. Sizes get bigger as the numbers get smaller, then after you hit 1 it goes into the 0-# sizes, which get bigger as the number gets bigger. Because of this, you don’t want to confuse an 0-4 sized hook with a size 4, especially when ordering online. The 0-4 hooks are close to 2″ long, which is certainly too big for kokanee. The hooks we have links to below we’ve checked out to make sure they are indeed size 4 hooks, as this is our go to. These bigger sized hooks are also sometimes listed as 4/0 or 4.0, depending on the brand.

Best Hook Color for Kokanee Salmon

Most people go for reds in kokanee lures. Some lures use a glow hook, like a number of options from Mack’s Lures. There are a few hooks, some of which I’ll mention below on my list, that come in multiple colors, or are dipped. I personally usually use red hooks, because they’re fairly easy to find, and offer a bit more color than the black hooks. That said, I have also run black hooks. When I pair that with a pink maggot from Gulp!, they’re keying in on that maggot for the strike, not the hooks, and it doesn’t really have a major effect.

Glow hook can make a difference, especially in wedding ring and other bead type lures when you’re fishing deep. I like the glow hooks for when I’m ice fishing for kokanee, but generally speaking, they’re not entirely necessary. In this article I’m looking more at the ability to hook into more salmon, and to have them stay hooked all the way to the boat.

Best Hook Options for Kokanee Fishing

Without further ado, below is the list of best hooks from Spilt Milt, along with my commentary. I’ve also included his video below if you want to get his two cents worth as well. I like 4 of the top 5 that he has on his list, and include them below, along with links where I could find them. If you don’t want to read all of this, I personally like #2 on his list the best, so if you’re just looking for the very best, scroll down to #2 and #1 and you’ll be in a really good place for swapping out your hooks. There are some other really good options on this list though, and some reasons to pick one of the others on this list, so I’d still recommend that you give the whole thing a read.

#5 Laser Sharp Octopus Hooks

Laser sharp Octopus. You want to have the hook point offset from the eye. As kokanee strike at the lure, it increases the hookup chance. That offset point and the sharp tip, along with a thin wire of the hook is what made Milt in the video put this as his #5. I will agree that this is a slight upgrade for most kokanee lures, but it certainly isn’t the best. If it were up to me, I don’t think it would be worth the time to redo all my lures to use them with this hook over what they come with stock from the store. The benefits aren’t worth the time. Now, that’s not true with these other options.

I don’t include it on my list because the others are just so much better. If you’re going to go through the trouble of switching out your hooks for something better for kokanee, get one of the best, not something that’s just slightly better. It’s also why I didn’t include a link. Not worth my time to find it, and I don’t recommend them.

#4 Maruto

This hook is especially good for big kokanee, over 15″, like those found at Flaming Gorge, Strawberry, Fontenelle, or Lake Roosevelt. Now, that doesn’t mean that if there’s a chance you’ll catch a larger kokanee you should switch, or that this hook catches more big fish. Rather, its just a little better at handling them. It has options that come in multiple colors including light pink metallic, which is my go to when I run this hook for kokanee. The sickle shape means its hard to lose them.

#3 Owner Mosquito

Like the name suggests, this hook is extremely thin which means its really easy to quickly hook a kokanee deep, through the whole hook. The wire is thinner than you’ll find on the hook of the octopus. It gets better penetration with thinner wire hooks. This is extremely sharp, and comes in both black and red. This is more of a premium hook, so your price per hook is going to start going up.

#2 Finesse wide gap hook from Gamakatsu: Best hooks for kokanee fishing according to kokanee.fish

It’s widely available, in red or silver. It is thin wire. It has a big gap between the eye and the point, which means a good hookup ratio. The exposed end of the hook means they hook up easily, and the thin wire means it penetrates deeply. They’re not terribly expensive either. Additionally, I recently went to a kokanee seminar in a sporting goods shop, and I saw a couple of the pros there checking out with these hooks, so I’m not alone in my assessment.

#1 Split Shot Drop Shot from Gamakatsu: Best hooks for kokanee fishing according to Spilt Milt

In the video, he only lost one fish on the split shot drop shot, but lost more than half the fish hooked on octopus hooks. Ultrathin shape. Holds corn really well. Available in nickel, black, and red. It can be more difficult to find, and can be more expensive due to them being harder to find.

I like the wide gap better than the split shot. I may I get more hookups from the wide gap, though I will admit, I think the split shot drop shot hook might land more fish. Personally, I also prefer my hooks in red. As I mentioned above, from my testing it doesn’t really make a big difference, but I still prefer red. I’ve never been able to find this hook in red. In the video from Spilt Milt, his hook is black as well, where all his others are red or pink, so I’m thinking he couldn’t find it in red either.