"Bill Kiene" wrote in message
. ..
Hi All U ROFFers,

At one time O. Mustad & Son of Norway 'owned' the fly hook market in the
USA. When I started in this business in 1965 we bragged about actually
having Mustad hooks in the big sporting goods store I worked for.



Quite right, the same situation pertained in Europe as well, with the
exception of one or two English hookmakers Mustad was the "only game in
town". I still have a fairly large selection of Mustads, at one time the
3904A was "the" standard wet fly hook. They were good hooks, and they never
let me down. Metallurgy and manufacturing techniques have improved very
considerably in the meantime, so it is rather surprising that Mustad did not
manage to maintain their "almost" monopoly.

In my opinion, there are now far too many hooks on the market, and they are
also far too expensive. But that´s how it goes! When I first started, 100
boxes were normal, and many people bought 1000 boxes of hooks. Now you are
lucky if you can find a package with more than ten or at the most 25 hooks
in it. The packaging now costs more than the contents.

Japanese hooks are for the most part very good quality, although as Bill
says, some tend towards being rather brittle. This is more than likely due
to over-tempering. They seem to like "harder" hooks.

TL
MC