Dress Shop Tips: Match the Hatch.. Or Atleast your bait

My one big complaints about massed produced dressed treble hooks is the complete lack of creativity (for the most part).. with that said I fully understand that with the  hundreds of colour options available to anglers today it is  nearly impossible for any one company to produce a dressed treble to match all their colour options, but they could at the very little mix it up a little bit.

When designing a dressed treble for a particular bait, you have 3 chances to make it unique.. (1) with your choice of feathers, (2) with your flash and (3) with your thread. Often changing just one of these items will give your treble a whole new look.

The Feathers:

The majority of the baits I tie consist of 2-3 feather colour combinations. One being the predominant colour that will in all likely hood be used on 2 if not all three sides of the treble. The 2nd (and 3rd) colours are accents or bulls eye colours, meant to draw attention or give you hooks some flair. I often match my accent colour with the belly or the back of a bait. In the above image I used the green to march the sides/back of the bait and the white to match the belly.

Tip: Oranges, Yellows and Reds are great highlight colours, all three can be considered too flashy to be used as a primary feather colour but they are great as the accent. Another way to make them pop is to pair it with a shorter black feather in front to frame the accent feather

The Flash:

Although I don't use flashing on all my trebles, I would be lying if I said it was not a key piece of any attention getting treble hook. Flashing is available in various varieties from a various companies. The two styles of flash I use the most are "flat" and the standard "round" flash. When it comes to flash colour options you don't need to get real crazy, the main objective is to pick up on the colours in your bait and add some sparkle and shine.

On the above bait I've used "black" coloured flash in order to pick up on the darker colours on the back of the bait and in the  green feathers.

Tip: Don't get to cutesy when trimming your flash. I like to leave it a bit longer then my feathers and I like it to flay out a bit adding more areas of sparkle and shine.

The Thread

The tying thread is probably the area that most tyers put the least amount of thought into… red is by far the most common colour I see used with dressed trebles, and if not red the black. I personally really like to mix it up and probably have more thread colour choices on hand then flashing

Often I will match my thread to the accent colour I'm using. So for the below bait you can see that Ive used Olive thread to match the olive green accent feather. The black flashing picks up on the greens and gives the bait the same sparkle that can been seen on the baits back and the olive thread ties it all in together (no pun intended)

Tip: When using a predominantly dark coloured feathers (like Black) I love to use a red, yellow or orange thread to tie with. This will give the bait some added pop.

So there you have it, some basic tips on dressing your baits treble hooks to ensure the carpet matched the drapes. When your first starting out don't hesitates to choose one or two colours to practise on, but as your skill improves get creative and start churning out trebles that will make you fishing buddies envious