The Finer PointsOf Conservation-minded Rigging
By Dave Anderson
With the recent trends in striped bass fishing and conservation, it has become even more important to take whatever steps we can to reduce our own personal impact on the fishery. While searching through our archives we found this unpublished article by Dave Anderson written in 2020 that deals with many of these subjects, we hope you'll enjoy the story and consider adopting some of the methods outlined within.
It’s a common thing. Striped bass fishermen look at a tried and true plug design and believe that everything about it is perfect, or at least matches what the builder intended as perfection. There’s also a deep-seated worry that the removal of a hook will result in more missed fish and even more heartbreaks when a good fish comes unbuttoned. For me, the dive into tinkering with removing a treble came as a result of losing a very large striper.
I was alone and made a very long walk to a desolate stretch of pebble beach where almost no one fishes, but there’s a magic hour in that spot and – with sweat pouring down my face – I had hoofed it hard enough to get there for the start of it. For 15 minutes I cast a wood needlefish across the increasing current and found no takers. On what I would estimate was my 12th cast, I felt the hit I was hoping for, solid – but not thunderous – she seemed to stand still holding the plug for a second longer than usual. Almost as if she already knew what she had done. With a second hook set, she took off running.
This spot is very shallow and I knew I had to command control of the battle or risk her scrubbing me off or reaching the ledge where I had been cut off before. So, I played dirty and fought aggressively. There were multiple stalemate moments, when I could feel her thrashing the bottom with her face, and her tail beating the line at the same time. It was in one of those moments, impacts reverberating up my braid like distant thunder, that the line went slack. When I brought the plug back in, the belly hook was gone, the split ring completely ‘pretzeled’, the rear treble was slightly opened, mopped with gunky weeds and a single scale clung to the bent hook point.
Piecing the forensics together, I figured that the forward hook had been stuck in her jaw, and the tail hook had found purchase in the gill plate or on the back of her head, the forces multiplied by two attachment points and her power pitted against mine, plus my 11-foot rod, plus my 55-pound braid… The stresses reached a critical point and exposed the weakest link: my split ring. It was in that moment that I realized that I probably would have landed that fish if it weren’t for that rear hook. So, as much as I might want to tell you that I made these modifications for the fish, in actuality I made them because I believed that it would lead to catchingmore fish.
But as I worked this problem and potential solutions out in my mind, I began to see images from my past flashing through my subconscious. Rear trebles gobbed into eye sockets, rear siwash hooks anchored in bleeding gills, a lively ribbon of red pouring down the flank of the fish, or the rear 4/0 treble on my 9-inch Doc one epic morning buried in the palm of my hand, me thanking God that the 25-pounder came off in with the same violent shake that fastened my hand to the plug. There was an even better reason to see this concept through: fewer hook points on the plug (especially those in the rear) would – almost certainly – dramatically reduce release mortality from hooks finding purchase in lethal spots, like the gills, throat and eyes. (Plus that added element of safety for the angler was hard to ignore as well.) All positive things.
I’m flattered to say that I think most surfcasters have seen the video I made with fellow surfcaster Jerry Audet a few years ago calledThe One Hook Solution.
In this video we offer a simple solution for removing the rear hook from a plug. You might think it would be as simple as taking the tail hooks off your plugs, but it’s just not that simple. When a plug is designed, tested and perfected with two (or more) trebles, those hooks become part of the variables that dial in the action of that plug. They also add critical points of balance which dictate how a plug acts and moves and also plays a big part in where in the water column that plug will swim. So, the weight of the removed hook needs to be replaced, the swinging action of that hook may also need to be accounted for. The One Hook Solution utilizes a bullet weight, typically used in freshwater fishing with plastic worms, to replace the weight of the removed hook.

Thru-wired with stainless wire with a loop at the top (skinny) end, these ‘worm weights’ can be easily crimped onto any plug. Further testing revealed that making the wire longer had a different effect and spawned a rule of thumb; plugs that create their own action, like a metal lip swimmer or Red Fin, work like they’re supposed to with the weight on short wire, right up close to the loop. Plugs that require angler-imparted action, like a glidebait, spook and certain needlefish, need a longer wire (made to match the length of the missing hook) so that the swinging action of the hook can be duplicated, creating the needed ‘kick’ to impart the proper action.
This solution is not fool-proof and not universal. It is still important to observe your plugs swimming after their surgical amputations to confirm that either the action was maintained or that you – at least – like what you see. And it is true that you can alter the action of your plugs by adding these weights, tweaking the length of the wire and also by adding a worm weight inside a flag.
In some cases, we may look at a swimming plug and think its action is too subtle, the things that can kill orbelabor the action of a plug are a belly weight that’s improperly placed or too much weight in the tail. We can’t easily move the belly weight, but wecan lighten its junk in the trunk. This is when a worm weight may be too much and a simple flag, just to create enough drag to keep it from swimming out of control, might be the perfect fix for a plug that seemed otherwise dead in the water.
The movement that has followed the concept of removing rear hooks, both for better hookup to landing ratios and for the conservation benefits, has spawned a bunch of other ways to skin the proverbial cat. Fellow surfcaster andFisherman Magazineeditor, Toby Lapinski pioneered the use of heavy-duty toilet chain to account for the weight of a removed hook. The nice thing about the chain is that you can count the links and cut lengths to match the weight of any hook.

The chain method works especially well on darters which is one of the plugs that I don’t love to use the worm weight on; my feeling is that the length of chain creates more drag and, it seems to me, a darter needs more drag than many other plugs.
Hybridization has been a growing trend in recent years as well, we can look back at least as far as the Hab’s Tallywhacker to see where the inspiration may have begun, but the melding of soft plastic and wood or hard plastic is something that we see more of, every year. And with the seemingly endless catalog of soft plastic shapes and colors, it should come as no surprise that ingenious anglers are using soft plastics to make up for the weight and drag of a removed tail hook. Some of the most popular baits are Ron-Z’s, Super Snax, Fin-S Fish, Slug-Go’s, Hogys, small curly-tail grubs and flukes. The best way to attach a soft plastic bait to the tail of your lure is to use a twistlock spring threaded onto the rear loop of the plug and then twist the bait into place. Experiment with different shapes, lengths and weights of plastic baits until you get the action you’re looking for. You can also use a single Siwash hook with the bait threaded onto the hook and super-glued into place.
Another growing trend is the use of tail flags. These hookless options are made from a much heavier gauge wire. Why do they use heavier wire? It’s not because they want the flag to hold up to bluefin tuna, it’s because the flag needs to be heavy so they can replace the weight of the treble they’ve been swapped for, maintaining the original balance of the lure. A good method for replacing trebles with flags is to weigh your treble and then weigh your flag and use the flag that comes the closest to matching the weight of the treble hook you’re replacing.

Some anglers may not be willing to fish without a tail hook. And I get that. Especially if your fishing time is limited, it might seem like a risk that you’d lose that one fish you hooked on your only trip that week or month. For those of you that just can’t commit to the one hook or inline switch, at least consider swapping your rear trebles out for a tail flag. And make a promise to me (or yourself [or the fish]) that you will give fishing with one forward treble a shot at some point this season. What you’re going to find is that you might miss a few hits, but you rarely ever lose a fish that you hooked and – honestly – those hits you miss are usually from smaller fish that tend to take the heaviest damage from a plug adorned with two (or more trebles) anyway… and we don’t need to do that kind of damage to enjoy our great sport.
As we progress into a time of uncertainty with regard to the striper stocks, and consider how recent surveys have shown that release mortality coupled with the number of striped bass kept by recreational fishermen account for the lion’s share of the striped bass removed from the fishery each season, it is wise for us to take whatever steps we can to reduce our personal impact on the fishery. If we – as a segment of the angling public – can collectively change our ways when fishing for striped bass that will be released, we may be able to move the needle regarding recreational release mortality. Ultimately, this should be the goal of every catch and release fishermen, regardless of species or technique. And if we all made these changes, there is no doubt that we would have an impact on the fishery… even if it doesn’t show up in future stock assessments.
Michael Fass
febrero 06, 2025
Fabulous article- concisely and effectively makes the case for using the “one hook solution”. And, importantly, Dave couples this with a terrific description of how to accomplish this without compromise. Catch more; release more safely; hook yourself less. Win. Win. Win.