Rig Hooks

[surfcowboy]

Hi everyone

I hope yall are having a good weekend. I just have a quick question. I have been looking for a rig hook online and i can not find one any where. do yall know any place that i could buy one from? are there any websites that offer them?

thanks for yalls help.

[CoastalOutfitters]

your not gonna want to pay the overlength freight


does your Academy have one ?

[surfcowboy]

well right now i'm in iraq so i have no clue if Academy in my area is carrying any.

so what places should i look if i was down in the houston area?

[gerstoy]

X2

I think all the bigger academy stores carry a rig hook, not the best but it will do. Problem is the bend is too sharp and wont fit over some pipes.

If you know any electricians, go buy yourself 2 sticks of rigid alumin conduit. Have him bend one stick sort of like a shepards crook with about a 14" gap, then cut the other stick to a length to fit where you intend to store it on your boat. Don't forget to add an inner tube or other rubber shock cord to your rope.

[hog]

To simply answer your question---If your just wanting to buy one, they usually have them at academy, I know they had them yesterday at the one in Lake Jackson..

************************************

I will say this first before I go any farther... Rig hooks are for tying up to and holding to a rig in decent nice seas ONLY!!!... if its rough, real choppy, just plain bad... the hook I can almost guarantee you is going to fail and maybe spring back to your boat and damage the boat or worse, hurt someone.. Think about it, a 3-10,000 pound boat jerking hard on a rope from a bad wave thats tied to a large solid pipe with a 3/4"-1" piece of aluminum pipe about a 12 gauge size trying to hold on...its gonna bend! Use common sense.. To me, rig hooks are just a convenience/luxury type item most of us (including me) feel we need to spend money on when we get a offshore boat. Next time you go to the harbor when all the fisherman come in from offshore..Try and pay attention to seeing just how many have rig hooks attached on their boats... I would guess to say you probably wont see any shepard type hardly at all.

With that said, here goes my .03

Just a strong suggestion first..... I feel VERY STRONGLY that a person using a rig hook of some sort needs a "shock absorber" on the rope... When you buy a rig hook, usually this big ole black round rubber band thing comes with it... Mine broke the very first time I used it where there was some seas putting a bit of stretch in it...

You really need this shock abosorber in my opinion


My suggestion is, buy a good thick bicycle inner tube (or two), fold it to where its like 1 foot or so... take your rope say 10' from the hook itself or closer and run it thru one side of the folded inner tube.. close the rope around that end with your hand and take some bouy twine and wrap both sides of the rope together around that end of the tube where its a loop that holds....

Next, put you at least 12" to 24" full of slack in the rope and do the same looping and tying on the other side of the inner tube...

so what happens is, the rope is not cut at all for safety... there is a stout inner tube rubber band with rope slack in it to absorb the jolts..

hope I didnt confuse you to bad... if I did, I will take a picture of mine and post...

I dont particularly like the shepard type rig hooks, but, they do have their plus's on accuracy hook ups.. A good rope with a good size boline tied and thrown does good also.

I have a one of these http://www.ezrighook.com/index_frame.html You can get them probably at a west marine or order them on line.. some folks dont like them, takes a bit of practice, but I also think the key is having the shock absorber.. If you do get one of these, get the largest size size you can afford (meaning diameter opening of the hook part)... those pipes on rigs are to big some times for the medium.. (which I have--I just have to be more selective of pipes I throw over) just takes a bit of understanding on getting it off the pipe... one of them common sense things we dont always think to do...haha Kinda like learning to throw a cast net.. practice a bit first at the dock in smooth water until you get the hang/feel of throwing and getting it off.. Stows away small and good also...

When all else fails, and money is short.... simply buy you a lenght of rope and some decent size bouy twine, and have your wife save you a gallon clorox bottle... tie about 30-40+ feet of bouy twine to the end of your rope... then tie the gallon clorox bottle to the bouy twine... fill the gallon container to where it has a little weight but still floats real good.. pull up to the rig... throw the jug over the pipe and feed out to allow the jug to float back to you at the boat... retrieve the jug and bouy twine with your gaff.. pull the bouy twine until you have the rope in your hand... and tie off,,, wallaaaa you have a real cheap tie up to the rig....


If you cant find anything, heres where you can buy some on line http://www.jerrylabella.com/rig_hook.htm


Main thing I dont like about the shepard style type of hooks is where and how do I store it out of the way on the boat...


heres a thread from a year or so ago where their talked about, kinda the same question as yours
Rig Hook discussion

and another http://2coolfishing.com/ttmbforum/sh...light=rig+hook

[jdusek]

Not sure what size boat you have but we destroyed two of them from Academy. They only lasted half a summer a each. My boat is 14K so that is probably why. I searched like you did to find a good rig online but never did. FTU in Houston carries some pretty good ones. If you call them they might be willing to ship. Since I do not live in Houston what we did is went down and got some good solid pipe, took it over to a muffler store and had them bend into the size hook we wanted.

Joe

[gerstoy]

We use mount ours down the side of the boat using 3 of these things called a flush mount pole holder. They don't look impressive, but they have yet to fail running our boat at sensible speeds.

http://www.wholesalemarine.com/pc/U-...le+Holder.html

We have only had one rig hook fail. That was due to our hook up point was not straight on with our drift and it wrapped around a pipe and quickly failed. If you are pulling straight on, an aluminum hook with a proper shock absorber should hold any 26' boat and probably larger. I think if you are in seas calm enough you aren't afraid to use a rig hook, you probably are not going to straighten the hook.

One argument I do concur with, if you drive around a rig and compare where you should hook up at compared to where the fish are at. you will typically find these points directly opposite of each other.

Rig hooks make fishing easy, learning to drift fish rigs make fishing fun!

[Calmday]

I have one of the EZ rig hooks that hog is talking about that I will let you have at a very reasonable price. Its like brand new and is the big one. Give me a yell when you get home if interested.

[thebach]

Cut Rate on I-10 has them in stock.

[Never easy]

Originally Posted by jdusek

Not sure what size boat you have but we destroyed two of them from Academy. They only lasted half a summer a each. My boat is 14K so that is probably why. I searched like you did to find a good rig online but never did. FTU in Houston carries some pretty good ones. If you call them they might be willing to ship. Since I do not live in Houston what we did is went down and got some good solid pipe, took it over to a muffler store and had them bend into the size hook we wanted.

Joe

we broke one from academy earlier this year our boat is only abot 6k lbs or so.