replacing treble hooks

I'm not a big fan of trebel hooks and was wondering instead of bending the barb if anybody replaces them with a J hook and what size? I was thinking like a size 8-10 for these:










andybody else do this?

PSU,  I am not crazy about trebles either.  I have a large plastic tackle box containing perhaps 200 trebles of various sizes that I've replaced on one lure or another.    Three reasons, with trebles they snag so easily most lures are doomed before you catch the first fish on them.   Second, not humane to the fish if you practice any kind of catch and release.   Third, they take up so much less room in your tackle box if you use single hooks.  I like to travel with thin clear plastic tackle boxes with single hooks on all my lures, spoons, spinners, stick baits, plugs, etc.   Except when I'm fishing especially large stickbaits and plugs for Muskie, Pike and some saltwater species.   If you have a floating stickbait, which many Muskie lures tend to be there is no great need to swith to a single hook.

When fishing for steelhead with plugs like you picture here, I almost always remove both trebles and replace them with #1/0 Sickle/Siwash hooks.   If I'm using a Kwikfish or similar flat bait, I'll remove both trebles but will only place a #1/0 on the back end.  Nothing in the middle.  Then I'll take some herring, not the canned stuff that falls apart easily but the fresh non-vinegarized stuff you can get in a good fish market and I'll cut some up into small slices and wrap it on the underside of the kwikfish with some elastic thread, the kind you use to tie egg sacs.   But that's strictly a steelhead move.   I have not yet tried it on bass, but I intend to.    You did not mention the size of the lure you have pictured. If it's intended to be a trout lure, I'd use #2 or #4 single hooks, preferably a siwash/sickle hook.

I  cannot say that the catch rate is any better/worse using single hooks, nor do I have the experience to say that it doesn't affect the action of some lures.  It may.  I do believe that when you get a "fish on" with a sickle hook he's alot less likely to get off compared to most other hooks including trebles which don't always offer deep penetration.   I have my best luck using single sickle hooks on hammered silver spoons for steelhead when little else seems to work.   But just knowing I'm far less likely to be snagged encourages me to constantly change lures when things are particularly slow.  I heard one guy say that you are exactly 1/3 as likely to snag a lure with single hooks.  My opinion is it's even less than that.

These are both sickle hooks below.   I believe the one with the straight eye is called the siwash/sickle hook.  The one with the bent eye is referred to as the octopus/sickle.    Don't ask me how they ever arrived at the term octopus. There are only 2 or 3 companies that make these.  I had been getting them online from RVRFSHR.com but they stopped selling the true "sickle" with the sharp bend, but rather a more rounded bend.  They both have large closeable eyes where you can permanantly attach them with a strong pair of pliers or a vise.

Also, test run in pool or somewhere before taking a crankbait with changed hooks out fishing.  Sometimes the balance is changed and the lure needs re-tuned before it will run correctly.

One thing you can do if you don't want to replace the treble hooks is to crush the barbs down.  That way you still have the right size hook for the lure, but reduce some of the issues with the trebles.  You can also just nip the tips of the hooks off.  This is not a perfect solution either, but the balance of the lure is less effected.
 
As Ironhed said, you can also just take off the front treble and leave the back one on.  I do this all the time with Gottcha plugs when I am at the Outer Banks.  The main reason for cutting off the front hook is to keep it out of my hand when taking a fish off.  Nothing ruins a good day of fishing like a trip to the ER to have a hook removed.  Besides most of the fish I catch usually are on the back hook anyway. 

psu, get rid of the plastic the hooks are attached to and you have a great steelhead lure. Russians buy a lot of them...WF