Weedless Hover Jig Heads Explained: When and How to Use Them

Traditional hover hooks are built for open water. Fish are not. A weedless hover hook combines a slow, controlled fall with a Texas-rigged hook point — and building one turned out to be far more complicated than pouring some lead onto an EWG hook.

Quick Answer: Which Hook for Which Situation?

Situation	Better Choice
Open water + straight tail	Upgrade Hover Hook
Maximum slow fall	Upgrade Hover Hook
Strolling suspended bass	Upgrade Hover Hook
Popping cork	Upgrade Hover Hook
Grass, brush, laydowns, mangroves	A.T.V. Weedless Hover
Paddle tails and creature baits	A.T.V. Weedless Hover
Heavy current or bottom contact	Traditional Upgrade Jighead

Hover fishing has changed the way a lot of anglers think about weight. For years, most of us looked at jighead weight primarily as a way to answer one question: how deep do I need to get?

Forward-facing sonar changed that conversation. Suddenly anglers could watch a fish follow a bait, see a lure fall past the strike zone too quickly, and watch a bass rise toward one presentation and completely ignore another. The conversation became less about simply getting a bait down and more about controlling how the bait gets there.

That is the basic idea behind a hover hook. But traditional hover hooks create one obvious problem: most of them are designed for relatively open water. Bass do not always live in open water, and neither do redfish, snook, peacock bass, trout or flounder. Fish live around grass, brush, timber, docks, laydowns, mangrove roots, oyster bars, reeds, flooded bushes, and all the other places where an exposed hook eventually finds something it was not supposed to catch.

What Is a Weedless Hover Jig Head?

A weedless hover jig head is a lightly weighted hook designed to give a soft plastic a controlled, slow-falling presentation while allowing the bait to be rigged Texas-style. The hook point is not left fully exposed. Instead, the plastic is rigged over an offset-style hook and the point is lightly skin-pricked back into the bait.

That gives you several advantages at once: a slow fall, better control of suspended presentations, weedless rigging, the ability to fish around cover, more natural pauses, compatibility with buoyant plastics, and the ability to glide or swim a bait through structure.

The goal is not simply to create a lighter weighted swimbait hook. The goal is to control the fall rate, posture and position of the bait while keeping it weedless. That distinction matters.

Are Weedless Hover Hooks Actually New?

This is one area where we want to be very transparent. When we started developing the Upgrade A.T.V. Weedless Hover Hook, we were not sure anyone else was truly building what we had in mind. Weighted EWG hooks have existed for years. Nail-weighted soft plastics have existed for years. Fiber-guard finesse jigheads have existed for years. But a purpose-built weedless hover hook aimed specifically at slow-fall presentations and modern plastics was much harder to find.

After researching the category, we did find other products that fit the broader weedless-hover concept. One notable example is Core Tackle's Weedless Hover Rig, which uses an internal weighting concept and weedless hook design specifically for hover-style presentations.

So we are not claiming Ebb N Flow invented the world's first weedless hover hook. What we do believe is that this remains a very young and relatively small product category compared with traditional jigheads, weighted EWG hooks and standard exposed hover rigs — which means anglers and manufacturers are still figuring out exactly what these presentations can do.

What Anglers Were Doing Before Purpose-Built Weedless Hover Hooks

For a long time, anglers basically built their own. The formula was simple: soft plastic plus EWG hook plus nail weight. A nail weight could be inserted into the nose or body of a bait to control sink rate and posture, and anglers could add more weight, use less, trim the nail weights, move them farther back or forward, and experiment until the bait behaved correctly.

That DIY approach still works exceptionally well. Hover strolling itself became popular partly because anglers learned they could manipulate light-hook and soft-plastic combinations to keep a bait suspended near fish instead of simply letting it fall through them.

The downside is consistency. Every bait becomes a new experiment. Nail weights can fall out. Different plastics tear differently. Weight placement changes from rig to rig. A purpose-built weedless hover hook attempts to give you that weighting in a repeatable package.

A Weighted EWG Is Not Automatically a Hover Hook

This distinction is important. Weighted weedless hooks are not new. They are excellent tools and have been used for years with paddle tails, flukes, swimbaits, worms, inshore plastics and weedless bass presentations. Their job is generally to add depth and stability while maintaining a weedless hook point.

That is not necessarily the same thing as hover fishing. A traditional weighted EWG is usually trying to give you depth, stability and weedlessness. A weedless hover hook is trying to give you weedlessness, controlled fall, hang time and balance. There is overlap, but the design objective is different.

Why We Built the Upgrade A.T.V. Weedless Hover Hook

We saw a gap between two presentations we already liked. The Upgrade Hover Hook is a belly-weighted hover design that excels with straight-tail plastics and buoyant TPE-style baits, but it is not our preferred option for fishing through heavy cover. On the other end, traditional weighted weedless hooks are great around cover and especially good with paddle tails, but we wanted something lighter and more finesse-oriented.

We wanted a hook that could fall slowly, work with buoyant plastics, handle straight-tail minnows, handle paddle tails, fish through grass and brush, be Texas rigged, and maintain enough nose weight to control a swimbait. That became the Upgrade A.T.V. Weedless Hover Hook, currently offered in 3/32 oz with a 2/0 hook and 3/32 oz with a 4/0 hook.

Why 3/32 Ounce?

3/32 ounce might look like an odd size until you fish it. It is lighter than 1/8 ounce but provides noticeably more control than 1/16, which puts it in a useful middle ground. It is light enough to produce slow falls, finesse presentations and long hang time, but heavy enough to give you better casting, more wind control, better depth control and enough nose weight for many paddle tails.

There is no universal perfect hover-hook weight. But for the A.T.V., 3/32 ounce proved to be an extremely versatile starting point.

Our Biggest Design Problem Was the Lead

This was probably the biggest pain point during development. We knew we wanted the A.T.V. to have some weight toward the nose, because paddle tails especially benefit from forward weighting when the tail creates resistance and lift as it swims. But adding nose weight created another problem: the lead became bulky.

Early versions worked. They just were not nearly as versatile as we wanted. A large chunk of lead at the nose can be fine with certain soft plastics. Then you try to rig a thinner traditional plastisol bait and suddenly you have destroyed the first half-inch of the lure before making a cast. We did not want to create a hook that only worked with one family of plastics.

Not Everyone Is Fishing TPE Yet

We love modern TPE and ElaZtech-style plastics for hover fishing. They are durable, they are buoyant, and they can create incredible slow-fall presentations. But anglers fish a huge variety of soft plastics, and we wanted the A.T.V. to work with more than just TPE.

We wanted to be able to rig things like ZOOM Super Flukes, ZOOM Speed Worms, Reaction Innovations Sweet Beavers, traditional paddle tails, standard plastisol minnows, TPE plastics and ElaZtech-style baits without absolutely destroying the nose of the plastic. That became a major design challenge.

Why We Tapered the Lead Toward the Hook Shank

Our solution was to change the profile of the weight itself. Instead of keeping the lead bulky and abrupt around the nose, we began tapering the weight back toward the shank of the hook.

That smoother transition does several things. First, it gives the soft plastic a more gradual surface to slide onto. Second, it allows more of the weight to remain integrated without creating one giant lump at the front. Most importantly, it opens the hook to a much wider range of plastic designs. A traditional PVC bait is generally much less forgiving than a stretchy TPE bait — force a huge chunk of lead into the nose of a fluke and you will often split it. The tapered design reduces that problem considerably.

Is the Tapered Nose Perfect?

No, and we do not want to pretend it is. Every soft-plastic manufacturer uses different materials, thicknesses, nose shapes, salt content, densities and formulations. There is no single weighted hook shape that will perfectly fit every soft plastic ever made, and some baits are still easier to rig than others.

But compared with our earlier prototypes, the current tapered design is substantially better, and we are proud to say we have reached a version we feel is where we want it. That is an important part of product development. Sometimes the first prototype proves the concept, the next few make it fishable, and eventually you reach the version you are comfortable putting your name on.

Why the Nose Weight Still Matters

If minimizing bulk was the only goal, we could simply remove the nose weight. But then we would lose one of the biggest advantages of the A.T.V.

Swimbaits create lift. The paddle tail is essentially pushing against water throughout the retrieve, and without enough forward weight a lightly weighted swimbait can rise too quickly, swim nose-high, lose depth or become unstable. That is one reason our traditional belly-weighted Upgrade Hover Hook is not our first choice for many paddle-tail applications. The A.T.V. keeps enough forward weighting to control those plastics, and the challenge was keeping that advantage without limiting the number of baits anglers could use.

Why We Did Not Use a Fiber or Wire Weed Guard

There are plenty of good fiber-guard jigheads, and there are excellent single-wire and double-wire weed guards. We are not saying those designs do not work — they absolutely do, and they can be excellent around sparse grass, rock, light brush, dock posts and scattered cover.

But when we say weedless, we wanted something capable of going into much heavier cover. That is where we prefer a Texas-rigged bait.

Fiber Weed Guards vs. True Texas-Rigged Weedlessness

A fiber weed guard sits in front of an exposed hook point, and the fibers help push grass, wood and debris away from the hook. But the hook point is still essentially sitting behind the guard. Enough pressure from cover can eventually push past the fibers. Heavy grass can collect around them. Small sticks can work their way between the fibers.

A Texas-rigged bait works differently. The hook point is protected by the plastic itself, which creates a smoother exterior with fewer things for vegetation or wood to grab. When you are fishing the thick stuff, that can make a huge difference.

Why Skin-Pricking the Hook Point Works

With the A.T.V., we generally prefer to lightly skin-prick the hook point into the bait. You are not burying the point deeply — you are simply laying it back beneath the surface of the plastic. Now the lure can slide through cover, and when a fish bites, the bait compresses and the hook point becomes exposed. It is a system bass anglers have trusted with Texas rigs for generations, and we are simply applying that same concept to a modern slow-fall hover presentation.

Fewer Parts Means Fewer Failure Points

There is another reason we like the Texas-style approach. A fiber or wire guard is another component, and any extra component can bend, break, catch vegetation, become deformed or change during repeated use. Depending on the guard stiffness and design, it is also another object that has to move during the hookset.

Again, this is not an argument that weed guards are bad. But when designing a heavy-cover presentation, we preferred the simplicity of plastic protects hook, fish bites, plastic collapses, hook penetrates — with no separate guard required.

Where Fiber Guards Still Make Sense

There is no need to turn this into an either/or debate. An exposed-hook jig with a light guard may provide excellent hookup efficiency while still offering meaningful snag resistance. Around rock, sparse grass, open brush and docks, that may be exactly what you want. But in true heavy cover, we would generally rather have the point completely protected by a Texas-rigged soft plastic. Different tools for different jobs.

Why TPE Makes Hover Fishing So Interesting

Traditional plastisol soft plastics tend to sink. TPE and ElaZtech-style materials often float. That one change dramatically affects how a hover hook behaves, because a buoyant plastic can fight against the hook's weight and create slower sink rates, horizontal posture, tail-up presentations, longer pauses and near-neutral buoyancy.

That is one reason weight charts should always be treated as starting points. A 3/32-ounce hook with a dense salted plastic might sink noticeably faster than the same hook with a highly buoyant TPE bait. The plastic itself is part of the weighting system.

The A.T.V.'s light forward weighting can create a great balance with buoyant plastics. The hook pulls the bait downward, the TPE resists, and that tension between the two can create a very controlled fall. It also allows you to fish the same buoyant plastics in places where an exposed hover hook may be frustrating — grass, brush, mangroves, dock structure and laydowns. Now the benefits of TPE and the benefits of a Texas rig can work together.

But We Did Not Want a TPE-Only Product

This was a huge part of the final design. It would have been easy to build something that worked wonderfully with one extremely stretchy plastic material, but that is not how most anglers' tackle boxes look. A bass angler might have a Z-Man bait in one compartment, a ZOOM Fluke in another, a Sweet Beaver in another, and a traditional paddle tail somewhere else. We wanted the hook to cross those categories, and that is what pushed us toward the tapered lead profile.

The ZOOM Super Fluke

A Super Fluke is exactly the kind of bait we wanted the A.T.V. to handle. It is a classic baitfish profile, and rigged on a weedless hover hook it can be strolled, twitched, dead sticked, skipped under docks or worked through vegetation. But its nose is not designed to stretch over a giant lead mass, and the tapered A.T.V. design makes that presentation much more practical.

The ZOOM Speed Worm

A Speed Worm opens an entirely different presentation. You can swim it, slow-roll it through grass, dead stick it, or let it fall beside cover. The A.T.V. gives the worm some forward weight without turning it into a conventional heavy Texas rig, which creates a presentation somewhere between a weightless worm and a traditional weighted rig.

Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver

The Sweet Beaver may sound like an unusual hover-hook bait, and that is exactly why we wanted the design to be versatile. A compact creature bait rigged on a 4/0 A.T.V. can be slowly crawled, glided, skipped, fished around docks, pulled through vegetation or allowed to fall beside cover. We are not saying every Beaver needs to be hover fished — we are saying the hook should not dictate what plastic you are allowed to experiment with. That is the philosophy.

Straight-Tail Plastics Still Excel

The simplest hover presentations are often the best. Straight tails create very little rearward lift, which lets the hook weight and rod movement control the bait. They are excellent for strolling, dead sticking, forward-facing sonar work, suspended fish, slow retrieves and cold-water presentations. If we were trying to create the purest hover presentation, a straight-tail minnow would still be high on the list.

Why Paddle Tails Need More Nose Weight

This is one area where our underwater video has been especially useful. A paddle tail is not passive — the tail is constantly pushing against water, and that creates resistance and lift. If you put a paddle tail on a very lightly belly-weighted hook, the lure can start climbing in the water column. A little forward weight stabilizes that, and that is one of the A.T.V.'s biggest advantages. It can still produce a light, slow presentation while giving the nose enough authority to manage the tail.

2/0 vs. 4/0: Which A.T.V. Should You Use?

Hook size should primarily match the bait, not the fish. The 2/0 is better for small minnows, compact flukes, small paddle tails, finesse worms and smaller TPE plastics. The 4/0 is better for larger flukes, full-size paddle tails, creature baits, larger TPE plastics and bigger swimbait profiles.

A six-pound bass can absolutely eat a 2/0 hook, and a small bass can eat a 4/0. Fit the hook to the lure.

Future Sizes: Could We Build a 1/0?

We are seriously considering it. A 1/0 A.T.V. Weedless Hover Hook would open the system to significantly smaller plastics, with potential applications including micro minnows, small finesse swimbaits, smaller straight tails, compact TPE baits, and crappie-sized and small-bass presentations.

The challenge is maintaining the design concept as everything gets smaller. A smaller hook does not simply mean shrinking every dimension — weight placement, gap, offset, lead profile and bait compatibility all change. But we think a 1/0 could make a lot of sense.

What About a 6/0 A.T.V.?

We are also looking at the other end of the spectrum. A 6/0 version could open up some really interesting opportunities for large swimbaits, magnum flukes, big TPE baits, trophy bass, striped bass, snook, tarpon and cobia applications. You could maintain a relatively light, weedless presentation while dramatically increasing the size of the bait, which could become especially interesting in saltwater.

Neither the 1/0 nor the 6/0 is something we want to release simply for the sake of having more SKUs. We want to test them and make sure each actually solves a problem. But both sizes are on our radar.

Where Weedless Hover Hooks Really Shine

The obvious answer is cover. But more specifically, they are great when fish are suspended around cover. Imagine a bass suspended two feet above hydrilla, or a fish sitting beside a brush pile, or a snook tucked underneath a mangrove limb. A traditional exposed hover hook may catch that fish. It may also catch the cover. A weedless hover system lets you make a much more aggressive presentation.

Grass

Grass might be the ultimate A.T.V. environment. Instead of dragging a heavy lure through the vegetation, keep the bait just above it. Let it fall, slowly bring it back up, tick the grass, pause. A bass can rise out of the vegetation and eat a bait that seems like it is simply hanging overhead.

Thick submerged vegetation like hydrilla and milfoil is exactly where skin-pricking the hook becomes valuable. A fiber guard can still collect vegetation, and a fully exposed hook certainly will. A smooth Texas-rigged profile allows the bait to move through vegetation with far fewer snags.

Brush Piles

Forward-facing sonar has turned brush fishing into almost a video game. You can see fish above the brush, beside it and buried inside it. But there is always a danger: let an exposed finesse hook sink three feet too far and you are hung. A weedless hover hook gives you a much larger margin for error.

Laydowns

A laydown is basically a giant underwater hook trap, with branches pointing in every direction. A Texas-rigged bait gives you a chance to actually fish through them. Cast past the tree, let the bait sink, slowly swim it through the limbs and pause beside key branches. That is incredibly difficult to do consistently with an exposed hover hook.

Docks

Docks are another ideal application. Skip the bait underneath, let it slowly fall, dead stick it beside a piling, swim it over a cross brace. The A.T.V. allows you to combine finesse fishing with aggressive placement, and that is a powerful combination.

Mangroves

Saltwater anglers should understand this immediately. Snook and redfish often sit where you can barely cast. A weedless hover hook lets you skip a light plastic deeper under mangrove branches and roots, and a lightly weighted TPE or fluke-style bait can then settle naturally into the strike zone. That is exactly the type of presentation we think has tremendous untapped potential.

Oyster Bars

Oysters destroy tackle. They also hold fish. A Texas-rigged presentation is not invincible around shell, but protecting the hook point dramatically improves your odds. That makes the A.T.V. interesting for redfish, speckled trout and flounder, especially when fish are feeding shallow.

Forward-Facing Sonar and Weedless Hover Fishing

Sonar is not required, but it makes the technique easier to understand. Suppose you are watching a bass suspended at 9 feet directly above a brush pile sitting at 14. You want your bait at about 7–9 feet. With a traditional jighead, the bait may quickly fall below the fish. With a hover presentation, you can keep it in front of the fish longer. Now add weedlessness — if the bait falls too far, you are not immediately terrified of the brush below. That changes how confidently you fish.

Keep the Bait Above the Fish

This remains one of our biggest takeaways from forward-facing sonar. Fish often rise much more willingly than they drop. If the fish is at 10 feet, try running the lure at 8–9 feet and let the fish come upward. Once a fish begins rising toward your bait, you have its attention, and that is when pauses, speed changes and subtle direction changes can become deadly.

The Pause Is Still the Trigger

The entire hover concept becomes most obvious when you stop moving the bait. A heavier jighead stops and drops. A hover presentation stops, falls slowly, glides and hangs. That extra second or two can be everything, because a following fish suddenly sees the bait become vulnerable. That is often when it eats.

Dead Sticking

You do not have to work this bait constantly. In fact, you might be hurting the presentation if you do. Cast it, get it near the fish, then stop, and let plastic buoyancy, water movement, current and boat movement create subtle action. Dead sticking a TPE plastic on a weedless hover hook can be especially effective around pressured fish.

Strolling Through Cover

Strolling is usually associated with open water, but a weedless hook opens new options. You can stroll over grass, beside docks, around standing timber, along laydowns and over brush. The presentation stays finesse-oriented, but the hook design makes it far more forgiving.

Freshwater Applications

Largemouth bass. Grass, docks, laydowns, brush and suspended fish make the A.T.V. a natural fit.

Smallmouth bass. Rock, grass edges and suspended fish are great targets.

Spotted bass. Especially useful around timber and brush where traditional exposed hooks become risky.

Peacock bass. Peacocks are often associated with aggressive topwater fishing, but finesse presentations can be extremely effective around vegetation, rock and canal structure.

Saltwater Applications

We think this category may ultimately become much larger in saltwater than many anglers realize.

Redfish. Grass, oysters, docks and shallow cover.

Speckled trout. Light presentations over grass and around shallow structure.

Snook. Mangrove roots, docks, bridges and current seams.

Flounder. Shallow cover and weedless minnow presentations.

Juvenile tarpon. Mangroves, canals, bridges and small baitfish presentations.

A potential future 6/0 A.T.V. could open even more saltwater opportunities.

Can You Fish Live Bait on It?

You can. We still think artificial plastics are where the A.T.V. concept shines most, but lightly weighted weedless natural-bait presentations can be interesting — shrimp, mud minnows and small baitfish, especially around structure. For open-water live bait or popping-cork applications, our traditional Upgrade Hover Hook may often be the simpler option.

A.T.V. vs. Fiber-Guard Jighead vs. Nail-Weighted EWG

A fiber guard is better around moderate cover where you still want an exposed-style hook. The Texas-rigged A.T.V. is better when you want the hook point fully protected for vegetation, wood, mangroves or other heavy cover. Neither replaces the other — they are different approaches.

A nail-weighted EWG still offers one huge advantage: customization. You can adjust the weight however you want, and for anglers who love tinkering that is difficult to beat. The A.T.V. offers something different — faster rigging, consistent weight, repeatable balance, no separate nail weight, no weight falling out and easier bait changes. There will always be anglers who prefer both.

How to Rig the Upgrade A.T.V. Weedless Hover Hook

Rigging it correctly matters. Start by inserting the hook point into the center of the nose. Push it through a short distance and exit the belly. Slide the bait up over the offset and weight, then rotate the bait into position. Lay the hook beside the plastic and determine exactly where the hook point needs to enter, push the point through, then lightly skin-prick it back beneath the surface.

The bait should sit perfectly straight — no bend, no bunching, no twisting. If the bait looks crooked before you cast it, it is going to look worse underwater. Redo it.

Rigging Traditional Plastisol on the Tapered Weight

This is where the redesigned weight really helps. Do not force the entire nose over the lead at once. Work the plastic gradually up the taper. Traditional PVC plastics do not stretch like TPE, so let the tapered shape guide the bait into place. This should dramatically reduce tearing compared with the earlier bulkier prototypes.

Rigging TPE

TPE can take more stretching but may require a different technique because the material is so elastic. Stretch the bait carefully over the nose and make sure it seats correctly. And remember that buoyancy will dramatically affect the final presentation — a TPE bait on 3/32 ounce may fish much lighter than a heavily salted traditional plastic on the exact same hook.

Common Weedless Hover Hook Mistakes

The biggest mistakes we see are fishing too fast, using too much rod movement, rigging the plastic crooked, choosing too large a hook, burying the point too deeply, leaving the point too exposed, ignoring plastic buoyancy, assuming 3/32 ounce behaves the same with every lure, fishing under suspended fish instead of above them, and using the technique in current too strong for the weight.

This is not a power technique. It is a control technique.

Do You Need Forward-Facing Sonar?

No. Forward-facing sonar helps us understand what the bait is doing relative to fish, but suspended fish existed long before LiveScope. You can still use weedless hover presentations around known grass lines, brush, docks, visible cover, bait schools, mangroves and oyster edges without ever seeing the fish first. The presentation still works.

What Underwater Video Has Taught Us

Sonar tells you what the fish does. Underwater video tells you what the lure does. We have spent a lot of time filming these combinations because it is amazing how misleading a lure can be above water. A bait that looks perfect in your hand can roll, rise, dive, twist or fall nose-first once submerged.

Small changes matter. Hook size matters. Weight location matters. Plastic density matters. That is why we are so focused on the entire system instead of simply putting a weight number on a package.

Where We Think the Category Is Going

We do not believe weedless hover hooks are a finished category. They are just getting started. Today's systems are largely bass-oriented, but there is no reason the idea should stop there. A 1/0 could open micro-finesse applications. A 6/0 could dramatically expand the technique into bigger freshwater and saltwater baits. Different weights could extend the technique into deeper water, more current and larger plastics.

And as TPE materials continue expanding across the industry, we think anglers are going to become increasingly interested in hooks designed specifically around buoyancy rather than simply sinking conventional PVC plastics.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Upgrade A.T.V. the world's first weedless hover hook?

No claim from us. Our research shows other purpose-built weedless hover systems exist, including Core Tackle's Weedless Hover Rig. We do believe the category is still relatively small and evolving.

Is a weedless hover hook just a weighted EWG?

Not really. There is overlap, but a hover design focuses much more heavily on fall rate, balance, hang time and finesse presentation.

Why use 3/32 ounce?

It provides an excellent balance between finesse and control — lighter than 1/8 oz, but noticeably more controllable than 1/16 oz.

Why is the lead tapered?

To reduce nose bulk and make the hook compatible with a wider range of soft plastics, including traditional PVC baits that do not stretch like TPE.

Can I use a ZOOM Fluke or a Speed Worm?

Yes. Those are exactly the type of traditional plastics we wanted the tapered design to accommodate.

What about a Sweet Beaver?

Yes. The 4/0 opens up creature-bait applications that are not normally associated with hover fishing.

Does it work with Z-Man and TPE plastics?

Yes. Buoyant materials are one of the presentations we designed around.

Why not use a fiber weed guard?

Fiber guards work well in many situations. For true heavy cover, we prefer a Texas-rigged hook point protected by the plastic itself.

Does it work with paddle tails?

Yes. The forward weighting makes it far more appropriate for paddle tails than our traditional belly-weighted Hover Hook.

Are a 1/0 or 6/0 coming?

We are considering both — the 1/0 for micro-finesse plastics and the 6/0 especially for larger swimbaits and saltwater applications. Neither exists yet.

Do I need LiveScope?

No.

Final Thoughts

The idea behind the weedless hover hook is simple. The execution is not. You need enough weight to control the bait, but not so much that you destroy the slow-fall presentation. You need enough forward weight to handle paddle tails, but not so much lead at the nose that you are limited to only the stretchiest TPE plastics. You want the hook protected from cover, but you do not necessarily want another wire or fiber component between the fish and the hook point.

Those tradeoffs are what shaped the Upgrade A.T.V. Weedless Hover Hook. Our biggest design issue was the bulky nose weight, so we changed it. We tapered the lead back toward the shank to open up the presentation to far more soft plastics — from buoyant TPE baits to ZOOM Flukes, Speed Worms, traditional paddle tails, and even creature baits like the Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver.

It is not a universal solution for every soft plastic ever produced. We do not think any hook is. But compared with where the early versions started, we are extremely happy with where this design has landed. And we are probably not finished — a 1/0 could take the concept smaller, and a 6/0 could take it dramatically bigger.

For now, the 3/32-ounce 2/0 and 4/0 A.T.V. Weedless Hover Hooks give us something we wanted in our own tackle boxes: a slow-falling, nose-weighted, Texas-rigged presentation we can actually throw into the places fish live.

Because sometimes the fish is not suspended over open water. Sometimes he is buried in the nastiest piece of cover on the lake. And that is exactly when weedless matters.

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The 3/32 oz A.T.V. Weedless Hover in 2/0 and 4/0, plus the rest of the lineup. Shop the Ebb N Flow Outdoors Upgrade Series →