Mustad Power Lock Weighted EWG Hook
Over the years I have been sometimes reluctant to throw soft plastics early in the spring before the bunker show up because it can be difficult to get a good presentation. Your either sliding a shad onto a jig head or using a weedless style hook. The problem with weedless style hooks it that they are unbalanced and give a very unnatural presentation and its a pain the properly thread the hook on. Many manufacturers have made more simple versions by having a plastic keeper come off the hook and you simply push the head of the bait, but some old problems were still occurring and new ones arose. The plastic keeper was a good addition because it made re-baiting much faster and allowed the bait to sit more flush with the hook, but many times the bait would get pulled off from the bite or while fighting the fish.
The other issue is that the hook never stayed straight up and the whole rig would often spin. Mustad has spent years of
research and has truly perfected this type of hook with their Power Lock Plus Weighted EWG Hook. One of the most amazing features of this new hook is the sliding weight on the shaft. In past hooks weights have been fixed on the shaft, which decreases your ability to give your baits a custom presentation. Having this sliding weight is important because with all the different styles and shapes of soft plastics you need to change your rig to suit the bait and that’s exactly what this hook allows you to do. Jeff Pierce of Mustad whom we have filmed with on different occasions spent so many hours working on the plastic gripper that holds the bait on. The previous model had nearly no gripping power at all, the plastic baits would slip off with only a few ounces of pressure which is much less than what a fish will exert on a strike. After working on the design, the new gripper was able to hold the baits on with up to 4 pounds of pressure which is simply incredible.
The new design of this hook allows you to rig it in a lot of interesting and effective ways which can be seen here.
