Madness!

[Jim_UK]

It is impossible to buy clothes just by their label descriptions of S, M, L, XL, XXL etc as manufacturers do not have a fixed definition of what these sizes actually are. I have a top that is marked as L and fits me with lots of room. I bought another marked as XXL and found that it was too tight.

What has this got to do with fishing I hear you ask. Well I discovered yesterday that a similar situation exists in fishing tackle - namely hook sizes.

I went into one of my local tackle shops to buy some smallish hooks suitable for small floating baits and asked for some 14's. The shop owner suggested that I try some of the 18's that he had at which point I suggested that they would be far too small. How wrong I was - the 18's that he produced were larger than the 14's I had in my hand.

Now when I was in my youth you could be sure that the hook sizes went larger as numbers got smaller - 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10 etc but it seems that that is no longer the case. My mate and I were discussing this last night and trying to determine just what it was that made a hook a particular size.

Could it be the gape of the hook? NO as we could see that the gape on the 18's was greater than the gape on the 14's.

Could it be the gauge of wire? NO as the 18's was a larger gauge than the 14's

The hooks that I had in my hand were Fox Match 18's

 

Just what determines the size that a hook really is?

 

Jim

[grumpybum]

Its always been the case of size difference between hook makers. Owner hooks were always marked up a size larger than the norm. It can also be affected by is it a long or short shank hook.

 

These days I tend to stick to a couple of makes so that I'm happy with the sizes. If I have bought what appears a different size I match them with the size of hook already in my boxes.

[Jim_UK]

A couple of waters that I fish on have maximum hook sizes (10's) so not sure how that would work without a defined size for hooks. I bet if I bought size 10's in the Fox hooks they would be quite suitable for hanging sides of beef at the butchers.

 

Jim

[Ken L]

Ha. You have no idea !

In the UK, there is a bit of variation between manufacturers and hook patterns but not much and they all use the same system.

Go buying hooks in Asia and there are five or six different sizing systems.

The latest batch of coarse hooks i brought back range from size 1 (about a UK 14) to size 10 (about a UK 8).

They're dam god hooks though and a fraction of the U price.

[Newt]

The only thing you can be sure of is that a Brand X #14 hook is smaller than a Brand X #12 is smaller than a Brand X #10. Only if the makers gave measurements would you know about Brand X vs Brand Y.

 

A US catfish angling forum did this for the major brands of circle hooks several years ago. They measured things like gape, shaft length, and several other critical parts and posted a table giving side-by-side comparisons for (I think) about 20 brands and the differences were startling.

[Jim_UK]

The only thing you can be sure of is that a Brand X #14 hook is smaller than a Brand X #12 is smaller than a Brand X #10. Only if the makers gave measurements would you know about Brand X vs Brand Y.

 

A US catfish angling forum did this for the major brands of circle hooks several years ago. They measured things like gape, shaft length, and several other critical parts and posted a table giving side-by-side comparisons for (I think) about 20 brands and the differences were startling.

 

Exactly the same situation as the tops I buy then. If I pick the brand carefully I will be able to boast that once I was XXL but now I am down to M(medium)

 

Jim