I was organizing some of my tying supplies and I found this small stash of old hooks from Mustad and Orvis. If I remember correctly the hooks in the Orvis boxes might be Partridge but I'm not sure perhaps someone might know. Instead of a rounded eye its shaft is bent and then folded over. The Mustad (Made in Norway) came in these nice little match boxes with the hooks folded up in a section of parchment.













Are these Hooks worth using to tie with? or are they best left alone and kept as a novelty or display?

I would definitely use them.

I'm still fishing that type hooks. I threw the boxes out years ago and keep all my hooks in plastic divided containers with labels.

Why would they not be worth using?

The Orvis hooks are "looped" eye, I have some in streamer hooks but can't recall what advantage they are supposed to have. When the head is finished the eye will be closed by it.

I mash the barbs on those old Mustad hooks, always have, and about 1 in 40 (?) will break when the barb breaks, so I do that before tying a fly on the hook. The little bump left when the barb breaks is all the barb I need. You may also notice the point is not quite as sharp as the modern chemically sharpened hooks but if the point scratches my thumb nail it fishes, if not it gets a few strokes of a hook hone, I like to make a triangle shape as I sharpen them, like a leather sewing needle has.
I bought several hundreds of Mustads at a bargain in the late '70s and still have many of them left. Out of all that I have used in those years, I don't think I have had more than 8-10 (5-6?) break in use and a couple of those were from rock impact on lousy casts. I'd not worry about strength, unless it becomes a problem, the tippet is much weaker than the hook, ime.

I bought a tin with about 50 of the little match boxes.s8 to 26.I use a lot of them for experimenting .The 10s and 12s i ran out of long ago.

They weigh more, which is an advantage when fishing where weighted flies are illegal (many salmon rivers for example.)

Use them if you enjoy tying.
If you want to sell them please send me a PM.

The simple answer is "oh yeah!" Those Orvis light salmon hooks would make great salmon/steelhead light speys and skaters/dries. Great find!

I tied up some pretend random Atlantic salmon style flies. They're just made up I didn't follow any real pattern. The materials are not super high quality and are kind of old. But the hooks are really nice to tie on.