Good idea! I tried a hay bailing hook and it didn't work very well because the hook wanted to ride up instead of down.
Cecil -- the great thing about these is that they always have two prongs on the bottom of the pond. I have at least 25 feet of rope tied to mine, maybe longer. The hook is heavy enough to throw out to the end of the rope.
My Dad use to use a similar device while dragging waters for those that have perished.
I haven't been involved in that part of life for over 40 years. These are certainly similar to those types of grappling hooks. They look similar, but my experience with the kind you referred were at least twice as big, maybe more. I don't know how they it do it now-a-days, but back 40 years ago they trolled at a several knots with a number of these on outriggers. That was in the days before good sonar. To do so, the type I was familiar with had the entire shank wrapped with about 3/8-inch lead "wire" and the hooks were sharpened. Those things were fairly heavy. The hooks were big enough to pull in a large sunken log or railroad tie.
The tack hooks are heavy enough to get to the bottom of a pond quickly, and they stay down when hand pulling the rope.
What is amazing are the number of things I've retrieved that I didn't even know I had lost!
