This is one of the questions I get most often at the showroom. Guys hold up a double hook rig and ask me whether the trailer hook needs to sit inside the skirt so it is hidden from the fish. My answer is always the same: no. I do not make any effort to hide the trailer hook inside the skirt, and I want to explain why.
There is an IGFA tournament rule that says the eye of the hook cannot protrude outside the skirt. If you are fishing a sanctioned tournament, having the hook eye show past the skirt edge is considered cheating. I am not an IGFA guy, but that rule tells me something. If tournament officials decided that a protruding hook is enough of an advantage that it has to be banned, then it is an advantage. I would rather have my hooks where they need to be to catch fish than hide them because it looks cleaner.
In my 7 inch lures I run a standard double hook rig, and the trailer hook sits pretty much inside the skirt on its own. Put that same rig in a 6 inch lure and the trailer hook hangs out the back noticeably. That is fine with me either way. What I am not going to do is shorten the wire or rearrange the rig just to tuck that hook inside.
A lot of fishermen think about the head of the lure because that is where the action is: the cup, the bubble trail, the color. But billfish, especially marlin, often do not attack from the front. What they do is swim up alongside the lure and swat the back end with their bill to disable it. They are treating your lure like a baitfish. If a real fish is swimming, a marlin will knock the tail first to stun it, then come back to eat the head. When your trailer hook hangs out the back and flops around at trolling speed, it looks like the tail of that baitfish. A marlin swatting the back of your lure is going to find that hook.
The front hook covers bites at the head. The trailer hook covers backend strikes. Together they cover the whole lure from front to back. Hiding the trailer hook deep inside the skirt does not help you on those tail-end bites.
Here is the other thing to keep in mind: we are pulling these lures through the water at 4.5 to 6 knots. At that speed, the trailer hook is not sitting still. It is flopping around behind the lure. To a fish looking up from below or tracking from the side, that looks like the tail of a moving baitfish. The fish does not know it is looking at a hook. It sees motion at the back of something that is moving fast through the water the way a distressed fish moves. If anything, that extra movement behind the skirt helps.
My uncle used to tell me the fish does not know that is a hook. Do not overthink the presentation. If the hook is hanging out a little, it is fine. If it is inside, that is fine too. I just do not go out of my way to change it.
The one time hook positioning relative to the skirt does matter is when you are running heavy skirt combinations. In a standard bullet lure, I run double 9/0 hooks. Bullets are slim. The skirt follows the diameter of the head and there is not a lot of material bunching around the exit point. Double 9/0 sits correctly without getting tangled in the skirt.
When I am running a triple-skirt combination on a larger head like an H1, three Yamashita skirts layered on top of each other, the hips on that combo are enormous. There is so much skirt material bunched up around the back of the lure that a standard 9/0 rig will constantly get fouled. The skirt keeps working its way over the hook gap and interfering with the set. In that situation I go to an 11/0 lead hook and a 10/0 trailer. The extra size gives me the clearance to keep both hooks free of the skirt material. Several of my friends who fish a lot run 11/0 and 10/0 in their regular 9 inch lures regardless, just to make sure they always have that clearance.
| Lure type | Skirt profile | What I run |
|---|---|---|
| Bullet (6 inch, 7 inch) | Slim, follows head diameter | Double 9/0 |
| Single or double-skirt 9 inch | Moderate flare | Double 9/0 |
| Triple-skirt combo (H1 head or similar) | Heavy flare at skirt exit | 11/0 lead hook + 10/0 trailer |
The goal is to make sure the hook gap is clear of skirt material before you put the rig in the water. Pull the skirts back, check the hook positions, and adjust. If the trailer is getting buried in skirt legs, size up.
I check every rig before it goes in. I set the trailer hook 180 degrees opposite the front hook and put a small zip tie through both shanks to hold them aligned during the troll. The zip tie keeps the trailer from jumping over the front hook while you are running. When a fish bites, the zip tie breaks free and the trailer hook can flop to wherever it needs to anchor. If the tie breaks on a catch, a rubber band or a short piece of skirt leg does the same job for the rest of the day.
A well-sized hook for your skirt combo and a rig that is free of tangles before it goes over the stern: that is the whole system. Do not spend time trying to hide the hook. Spend it making sure the hook is sharp and the rig is clear.
For more on double hook rigging and wire setup, see the post on Single vs Double Hook Rigging: How We Rig Trolling Lures in Hawaii.
The 9/0 hooks I use are available in the shop: 6 Pack Stainless Steel Hooks.
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