Some of our waters require single (and sometimes barbless) hooks on our lures. In addition a single hook can hold fish better and makes releasing native fish easier.
However lure manufactures insist on selling their lures with treble hooks installed.
It is pretty easy to convert a salmon plug to have single hooks. Many have instructions & replacement hook suggestions printed on their packaging.
This post will focus on the Hot Shot, Brads Wigglers, Wiggle Wart, FatFish style of salmon plugs.
First remove the treble hooks, by opening the split ring and working it off the eye attached to the plug.
Next select a single hook to replace the treble. A good rule of thumb is a siwash hook that has a gap that is 50% larger than the gap of a single hook of the treble. More about that is explained here.
It is often good to drop the hook back a little bit father by adding a bead chain between the plug and the hook.
Clamp the eye of the hook around one end of the bead chain. Then use a split ring to attach the bead chain to the plug. Usually the hook is placed on the belly eye.
The result should look like this.
What hook size 1/0?
It depends on the size of the plug. As a general rule, measure the gap on one side of the current treble hook, then multiply by 1.5. Then find a siwash hook with a gap size close to that size. For example let’s say the treble had a gap of 1/2 inch (.5 inch). 0.5 * 1.5 = 0.75 (3/4 inch). So you’d want to take your tape measure to the tackle shop and find a Siwash hook with a gap of 3/4 inch