What hook size fits a five-inch stick bait?
A 4/0 extra wide gap hook. The rule beneath the number: the gap must be wider than the bait is thick, or the point never clears the plastic. Hook style, wide gap against straight shank, is genuinely contested.
Why nobody gives you a straight number
Search this question and you get a range: 2/0 to 5/0, most often 3/0 to 4/0, “depending.” Depending on what is never stated. No manufacturer we could find publishes a recommended hook size on the package or the product page for a five-inch stick bait.
The range exists because stick baits from different makers are not the same thickness at five inches, and because a hook labeled 4/0 by one company has a different gap than a 4/0 from another. The number on the packet describes shank length more reliably than it describes gap.
So the number is a starting point and the rule is the actual answer.
The part that is genuinely contested
Size is the settled half of this question. Hook style is not, and two anglers who have fished both sides disagree in public.
Matthew Stefan uses extra wide gap. He threw it for years, switched to straight shank when the industry pushed that way, then missed dramatically more fish on the hookset over about two years and switched back. His complaint about the other camp is pointed: most straight-shank advocates have always thrown straight shank and never really fished both.
Justin Atkins and Tyler Berger use straight shank. Berger reports missing a handful of tournament fish on an extra wide gap with a large trick worm.
Stefan is the one who reconciles it, and his answer is the useful part. Hookset style decides the hook, not the other way round. He sets fast and hard, which suits the wide gap. An angler who feels the bite, reels down, and leans into the fish is better served by a straight shank. Rod action, braid against fluorocarbon, all of it shifts the balance.
He is also honest about the size of the effect: one or two fish, not three out of ten against nine out of ten. Anyone telling you hook style is the reason you are not catching bass is selling something.
What that means for you. Start with the extra wide gap. A beginner reeling down and leaning is not yet a fast hard hooksetter, which by Stefan’s own logic argues for straight shank, and the wide gap is more forgiving of an imperfectly rigged bait. Once your hookset becomes automatic, the straight shank is worth trying, and by then you will have the one thing that actually settles it: your own hookup rate on a hook you have fished enough to judge.
The artifact: the gap rule, and how to check it
The rule. Lay the hook against the bait at the point where the bait is thickest. The distance from the hook point to the shank has to be visibly wider than the bait. If the point sits flush against the plastic or inside its silhouette, the hookset drives the point into the bait instead of through the fish.
The check, in three steps.
- Rig the bait Texas style, point buried, the way you will fish it.
- Press the hook point down against the top of the bait with your thumb, the way a bass closing its mouth would.
- Look at whether the point breaks the surface of the plastic before the shank stops moving. If it does, the gap is enough. If the bait bunches and the point stays buried, go up a size.
That test takes ten seconds at the tackle counter and it beats any number we could give you, because it uses your bait and your hook.
| If the check fails | Do this |
|---|---|
| Point stays buried, bait bunches | Go up one size, 4/0 to 5/0 |
| Point clears but the bait hangs bent | Hook is too long in the shank, go down a size |
| Point clears and the bait hangs straight | Correct, fish it |
Start at 4/0
If you want the number without the test: 4/0 extra wide gap. It is at the top of where public guidance clusters, and erring wide costs you almost nothing while erring narrow costs you fish.
What we do not know
This is the clearest gap in our evidence. We have not measured hook gaps or bait bodies, and we do not run physical tests. The 3/0 to 4/0 range comes from anglers talking to each other in public, not from a manufacturer specification or a study. If you find a maker who publishes a spec for their bait, that beats everything on this page.
On hook style, nobody has published a controlled comparison either. What exists is two experienced anglers reaching opposite conclusions from their own hookup rates, and one of them offering a mechanism for why both can be right. That is better than consensus with no reasoning behind it, and it is not proof.
Do this next
Run the three-step check on the hooks you already own before buying more. Most people discover their existing hook works.
Sources
- Community experienceAngler forum and retailer guidance on five-inch stick baits clusters at 3/0 to 4/0 extra wide gap, with individual recommendations ranging from 2/0 to 5/0. No source in that range explains the reasoning.
- Practitioner testimonyBass Fishing HQ (Tyler Berger), on hook and bait pairing: Justin Atkins rigs a 4/0 straight shank in a 3.5 inch tube specifically because the oversized hook pinches the body flat and changes how the bait falls. Hook size changes bait behavior, not only hookup rate.
- Practitioner testimonyMatthew Stefan, via Bass Fishing HQ, on hook style: he fished extra wide gap, switched to straight shank when the industry pushed it, missed dramatically more fish on the hookset over about two years, and switched back. He notes most straight-shank advocates have always thrown straight shank and never really fished both. He ties a straight Palomar rather than snelling.
- Practitioner testimonyJustin Atkins and Tyler Berger, via Bass Fishing HQ, both fish straight shank. Berger reports missing a handful of tournament fish on an extra wide gap with a large trick worm.
- Practitioner testimonyMatthew Stefan's reconciliation of the two positions: hookset style and equipment decide it. He is a fast, hard hooksetter, which matches an extra wide gap. An angler who feels the bite, reels down, and leans into the fish is better served by a straight shank. In his framing the difference is one or two fish, not three out of ten versus nine out of ten.
- Our inferenceThe gap-versus-body-thickness rule is our synthesis. It is geometry rather than a tested finding, and we have measured no hooks or baits ourselves.