A door hook has one job: hold the door shut under tension and let go when you want it to. Most of the trouble people have with hooks isn't the hook. It's the rig.
The parts
- The hook. Cinch at one end, hook at the other. The cinch grips the band; the hook catches the door wire.
- The band. Rubber crab pot band or bungee cord. Runs from the pot frame, through the cinch, and provides the tension that holds the door closed.
- The door wire. The horizontal wire on the door the hook catches. On a commercial pot this sits a fixed distance from where the band anchors, which is why center-to-center span matters more than overall length. See how to measure a door hook.
How many hooks per pot
Most commercial Chesapeake pots run two hooks on the harvest door, one each side, so the door pulls flat and even. Some run one in the middle. Pot builders rigging for a fleet usually standardize on two. A box of 500 rigs 250 pots at two a door.
Rubber band or bungee
Both work. The difference is life and feel.
Rubber crab pot bands are what most commercial guys are moving to. They hold tension without stretching out, they don't fray, and they last longer in salt and sun than cord. They need a cinch sized for a flat band, which is what ours is cut for.
Bungee cord is cheaper by the foot and easier to find at a hardware store. It loses tension as the sheath wears, and a frayed sheath will hang up in the cinch. It works fine for a recreational pot that goes in the water twenty times a year. On a commercial pot pulled daily it's the part you replace first.
Our hook takes either. The cinch is sized for rubber and runs standard bungee without modification.
Setting tension
The band should hold the door firmly shut with the hook seated, and release with a single pull from the deck. Too loose and the door lifts in a current. Too tight and you're fighting it at every pot, and you'll snap points forcing the hook. If you can't seat the hook without leaning on it, the span is wrong or the band is too short. Fix the rig, not your grip.
Where the hook goes when the pot is stacked
This is the one nobody thinks about until winter. A stack of pots puts the weight of every pot above on the hooks of the pot below. Hooks that stand proud of the wire take that load on the points and snap. Hooks with relief cut into the points lay flat and pass the load to the wire. That's the whole reason the FlatStack is shaped the way it is.
Replacing a hook
Slip the band out of the old cinch, slide the new hook on, seat it. No tools. If you're replacing hooks by the hundred every spring, the question isn't how to do it faster, it's why they're breaking. That's its own article.