In reply to Post #43
I've looked at and tested a lot of hooks from a lot of different brands. I'm a nightmare for buying new pieces of tackle just to have a play with them only to never use them (probably comes from my product development background).

In my opinion, of the hooks I've seen which probably includes all of the "big" brands the Fox edges, Nash pinpoint, and Angling Iron hooks are the sharpest untouched hooks straight out pack. By this I mean the usual 30% (as mentioned in my post above) that I consider good to use and aren't slightly burred, dulled etc. The common theme with these brands is they all use relatively long, fine points on their range of hooks in comparison to others. These points generally get a branding assigned to them Arma-point, Duropoint etc and I the hooks all tend to have a very similar finish (light grey PTFE coating) and I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they all came out of the same factory but either way this design does produce the sharpest hooks straight from the packet which makes sense. The finer the hook point the sharper it should be, which is in essence what we are trying to achieve by hand sharpening.

That said, despite them being the sharpest I'm not a massive fan of the patterns that these brands offer and the wire gauge that they use. I've been a long term user of the Atomic hooks, the Chodda covers nearly all of my fishing and I really like the pattern, thick wire gauge and the inherent strength that this brings.
Recently I've been using the Thinking Anglers SE and CS hooks and again these use a proper bit of wire.

At the end of the day I'd rather compromise on the sharpness and use something that I know won't let me down once the fish is hooked and generally I find that the good ones sharp enough to use straight out the pack when required.

All my opinion of course.

For unbeatable sharpness a hand sharpened hook is always going to come out on top, whether you do this yourself or purchase them ready sharpened from somewhere like J-Precision or SS Hooks is up to you. That said I do think there is a time and a place for untouched hooks straight out of the packet. Circumstances for this would be when fishing over gravel, large presence of nuisance fish / cray fish etc. This particularly applies to using bottom baits where the hook is permanently in contact with the bottom and any movement of the rig has the potential to damage the point of the hook. At the end of the day i'd rather have a slightly less sharp "out the packet" hook out there than a a mega sharp, super fine sharpened hook that's had the point turned over.

Because of this when I buy my hooks I check all of them out the packet and sort them into ones that I consider sharp enough to use straight out the pack (normally ends up being about 3/10 and this pretty much applies to all manufacturers) and put these aside in a hook storage case. The others I will hand sharpen and use for pop up rigs or sometimes bottom bait rigs where the lake bed/ nuisance fish are less of an issue.

I should point out that I generally use straight pointed hooks for most of my fishing so again these are more prone to point damage.

As has been said boom material/ length really is down to personal preference and perhaps the type of bottom/ substrate that you are trying to present on.

I do think that using a stiff mono/ fluro with nice, big loops either end takes some beating though.

Some good materials for this are Suffix Memory Free Snood Mono 30lb 0.55mm or Gardner Slinky 40lb 0.55mm. They come from the sea leader market but both crimp superbly when using the small 0.6mm Korda Krimps and are a nice stiffness for hinge booms.

As Yonny has said above you can't judge a rig on one fish.

The hinged stiff link when tied properly using good components and a sharp hook is probably the best rig out there in terms of rig mechanics, by which I mean hooking them from whatever direction they approach the bait and them staying on until they're in the net.

In my experience the dodgier hookholds with this rig can often be down to using an inferior pop up that is not buoyant enough to hold the hook section up straight. When the hook is sat leaning over is when you can start getting them in the scissors etc.

In reply to Post #1
Thinking Anglers cover up is really good and a fair price.

Really waterproof and can be used to a multitude of things.