This is purely personal preference, but when carping with Size 14 and up, I always select eyed hooks and knotless knot regardless of whether I’m hair rigging for the simple reason that feel more comfortable with the knot. These hooks are used when there’s a good chance of a bonus lump of the main stamp is large and I want to minimise risk of hooklength breakage, even though I’m happy with my barbless knot. In these circumstances, the hook guage is on the thick side, and i just feel that the chaces of the knot slipping off the spade increases with wire and line diameter.

With finer lines, I’m more than happy to use spade ends and will make an appropriate selection of eyed or spade when carping with smaller hooks as the venue and conditions dictate.

If roach are a species that I need (and as long as it’s not a carp water) in order to compete, it’ll be spades all the way.

I tend to only use spaded hooks on club venues as you don’t tend to ‘bag up’ on carp like at commercials. Unless i’m fishing with paste i will then use an eyed hook.

I’ve found on many occassions when using spaded hooks on commercials the constant pressure on the hook means the spade cuts the line. Since then i only use eyed hooks on commercials. However if winter fishing on a commercial is very hard then i will most certainly go for a spaded hook, again as you aren’t putting as much pressure on the hook as you would in the summer. That’s what i think anyway, i could be wrong but that’s the way i see it.

For silverfish a spaded hook is unbeatable as it gives better presentation and as you probably know silverfish can be very shy biters.

Also any carp situation too is when i use a eyed hook because you don’t have to worry about the spade cutting the line in the long hard fight.

The thing that has really been doing my nut in recently is using a eyed hook knotless knot style without a hair on it when using expander pellets for example. As you’ve said the hook points inwards which does seem ideal for hooking more fish but i’m not so sure. Any hook like the pr36 is a different matter though because there is the out-turned eye. But for a hook like a fox series 2 is different as the eye is straight.

I was fishing yesterday at a club water with a spaded hook and i believe i hooked every single fish but once the carp moved in i changed over to a fox series 2 eyed hook, knotless knot without the hair and i missed a lot of bites. I believe it’s because of the hook pointing inwards but then again i might just of been unlucky to not hook some of the fish. If that’s the case then i don’t know why a eyed hook without a hair wouldn’t hook as many fish than a eyed hook with a hair.