Gamakatsu "Smallest" snelled tanago hooks package
Comparison of Owner Smallest hook and Gamakatsu Smallest hook, showing the longer point on the Gamakatsu hook.
Green Sunfish caught with Gamakatsu Smallest tanago hook
Red midge pupa fly tied on a Gamakatsu Smallest Tanago hook

Gamakatsu "Smallest" Tanago Hooks

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$4.00

This is definitely a case where something got lost in translation. The Gamakatsu "Smallest" tanago hook is much larger than the Owner "Smallest" hook and much, much larger than the Gamakatsu "Ultimate" hook. It's not so much the size of the hook itself, it is the length of the point.

The whole point (pardon the pun) of the Ultimate hook is that the smallest fish have very small mouths and can't take a hook with a long point. The Ultimate hook has a very short hook point, producing in a factory hook what obsessed Japanese tanago anglers do at home with a microscope and jewelers' files.

However, one thing that I've found from my own micro fishing is that most of the fish I catch don't have such tiny little mouths. (Maybe I only catch the easy ones.) Most shiners and chubs and young sunfish can pretty easily take a larger hook. In fact, the hooks with extremely short points don't hold "larger" fish as well as some micro fishermen would like.

A "larger" fish might be 3.5 inches as opposed to 1.5 inches, but it turns out that the Gamakatsu "smallest" hook is pretty well suited to catching, and holding, the larger micros. It is very well suited for catching small sunfish.

For that matter, it looks enough like a scud hook that I'm going to try tying some tiny flies on them, and with red thread, looks a lot like a midge larva.

10 hooks per package