Hogy Quality and Design

At Hogy Lure Company, we pride ourselves on making the best soft baits on the market. But before we go any further, we’d like to stop for a moment and define “best” in Hogy Terms:
 

Hogy Best: the perfect balance between function, action and durability.

We accomplish this lofty goal by using the finest materials and most advanced manufacturing techniques that result in highest quality, rather than the lowest cost. Webster defines quality as a degree of excellence. We agree! Quality, as opposed to taste, is objective and definable. In designing our products and refining the materials we use to manufacture them through rigorous testing, we assess how each new product fits our criteria by answering the following questions:

1. Function: What are our new products intended use? Is it soft baits that can be rigged quickly and easily? Is it designed to mimic a certain fish? Is it possible to get both superior action and durability in a premium soft bait? Will our tins hold plastics securely, and do we want our baits to run deep or shallow? Does the bait cast well into the wind? These are the sorts of questions we ask ourselves before moving to our next design phase.

2. Action: We tend to put our strongest emphasis here. We believe that the main reason you’re fishing is, well, to catch fish! Fishing is fun and we want you to catch more fish by using our products. Since we now understand what the product’s intended function is, we’ll take a hard look on maximizing the product’s action. Based on decades of fishing experience for dozens of species, we believe that what fishermen call “action” – the way a lure moves through the water, is the single most important factor in whether or not a fish will hit. We’ll ask questions like: Does it need to be slink or undulate as it moves through the water? Should it be splashy on the surface? Flashy? Big? Small? OK, now that we have our priorities straight, we move on to the question of how to maximize the durability of the product.

3. Durability: Well, being in the soft bait business, we are certainly challenged by the toothy critters that might like to sample our lures. Obviously, some species are going to make short work of any soft bait. But ask yourself a simple question, as we do at stage of the design process. Would that fish have hit at all if we were using some lure that was less enticing? Many fishermen believe one thing that makes soft baits so attractive to predator fish, along with their life-like action, is their feel. The belief is that fish will hit and hang onto something that feels natural. So perhaps the sacrifice of a soft bait to a trophy fish that might not otherwise hit is an investment in a truly memorable fishing experience. You’ll have to be the judge of that. But having said that, you can be sure that we strive to make the most durable soft baits you’ll find – and we’re always trying to improve what we already have. We may ask ourselves what types of materials that may last for just one more fish? If we’re designing a tin or a jig head, we’ll look at hooks and ask ourselves which hooks last the longest in salt water? We’ll experiment with blends of plastic, play with alternative rigging methods. Basically, we’ll do whatever it takes to beef up our products without compromising action. Whatever the cost!

Now that you know what we’re thinking you’ll hopefully appreciate our Hogy Best ratings for each of our products. Each Hogy product whether it’s ours or one that we approve of will come with brief descriptions in each criteria.

Enjoy our products.
Cheers,
Hogy Staff