Tail Talk

I have been removing the tail hook and replacing it with a variety of dressings on my surf plugs for a long time. I certainly wasn’t the first person to do it, but I was one of the earliest to write about the practice and encourage other surfcasters and plug builders to give it a try. Several extremely well-known plug builders have even credited me with being the reason they made the change on their plugs.

Dave Anderson and Jerry Audet were also early proponents, most notably through their One Hook Solution. Their work helped push the concept even further and took it in directions I hadn’t yet explored.

For those who have adopted the modification, the reasons vary: conservation, altered action, increased casting distance, personal safety, and more.

For me, that last one has always been the biggest factor—safety.

With one less set of treble hooks on a plug, there are fewer hook points available to bury themselves in my hand, arm, leg, or any other unintended appendage. That was what initially drove me to dig deeper into the concept and eventually find ways to eliminate the extra treble hook on all but a select few of my surf plugs.

But for me, it isn’t as simple as cutting off the tail hook and calling it a day.

I have spent a lot of time looking at exactly what is attached to the back of a particular plug and how that rigging fits into my arsenal at a given location or under a specific set of conditions. Do I want my darter to dive deep or run shallow? Should the needlefish glide or wobble? Should the metal lip push water on the surface or bite and dig? Does the plug need more weight toward the rear to achieve a more stable flight, particularly when casting into a headwind?

Every type of tail dressing—bucktail, synthetic, saddle hackle, schlappen, bare naked, and everything in between—changes the way a plug performs. And it doesn’t stop with the dressing itself. What that dressing is attached to—light plug wire, heavy stainless rod, chain, etc.—can also change the plug’s action both during the cast and on the retrieve.

I have gone way, way down this rabbit hole, testing and retesting different plugs with different combinations to the point where I have developed a loose but surprisingly consistent playbook for what to do to make a particular plug behave exactly the way I want it to.

We touched on this subject a bit in S3 E27 | Make The Lure Do What YOU Want It To Do, but even there, I didn’t fully open up about just how obsessed I have become with the concept at times.

I recently tied up a fresh batch of light wire tail flags with fluorescent chartreuse grizzly variant saddle hackles for some fall run plug rehab. While there is data to reflect the combination of light wire and feathers proving beneficial at producing certain desired results, the color choice just simply looks good to my eye and ends up on almost all my surf plugs regardless of their color.