At the Bass Pro Spring Classic, Steve Chaconas discussed using a red treble hook on the middle of your plugs—particularly a top water plug. This mimics a bit of bleeding and makes the plug appear more wounded and distressed.
This last weekend, I took some time to see how hard it would be to swap them out – pretty easy. Just unscrew the old hook; being careful not to lose the tiny screws and pop the new on back on.
For attachments that do not unscrew, work the old treble off the split ring and then put the red hook on in its place. The easy way to do this is to get the old one started and then to work the new red hook on at the same time. This keeps you from breaking your fingernails as you try and get the red one started from scratch.
I’ll see how this works when I go bassin’ this weekend.
Since I was also going to fly fish for bass, I looked thru a catalog and was surprised to see that none of the flies were tied on a red hook. I wonder if this is a trick that has not percolated to the fly fishing population.