Sharp Hooks but not too big

If you tie your own nymphs and streamers take a lesson from the late Charlie Brooks as I did many years ago. The previous fall Brooks, while we were fishing the Madison River, stressed the need for large stonefly nymph patterns for the large brown trout on the large rivers. He liked size 4 nymphs on 3X long hooks that were well weighted. That winter I experimented with tying some and sent them out to Brooks. In order to add extra weight to these large nymphs I tied them on 5X stout hooks. Brooks wrote me a very nice thank you letter and liked the style of my stoneflies. However, he pointed out that with wire that large in diameter we would have trouble hooking the trout so I tied some of the same patterns on Mustad 9672 hooks which is a standard weight wire and Brooks did well with them the next summer.