fishon4ever,
True Glasso didn't tie his famous spey flies on extra long shank hooks. He tied them on long-shank low-water hooks that were very similar to the Bob Ververka Classic Salmon Hook (the Daiichi 2131) in #'s 2,1, and 1/0. Having talked to Dick Wentworth back in the early 1990's about hooks and why Glasso and he didn't tie on longer-shanked dee hooks. Wentworth told me it was simply because Glasso was not able to find longer-shanked dee hooks, so he used the longer-shank low-water hooks (he preferred Sealy) he could get. I also found out in that conversation that Wentworth preferred to tie his and Glasso's speys on AJ Spey Hooks #3 and 1/0 precisely because the hook shank was longer more like a dee hook.
Therefore, it is pretty clear to me that Glasso didn't tie his spey flies (or Wentworth as well for that matter) on longer dee type hooks for the simple reason he couldn't get them. So they used the hook they could get that had a longer shank in a salmon iron. When I asked Wentworth why they didn't use a 6xl or 7xl limerick bend streamer hook, he told me it was because the streamer hooks did not have loop eyes (and the one that did were way too long and big since they were for the Rangely Streamer flies like Carrie Steven's famous flies used for trolling) and the limerick bend just didn't look right on a spey fly. They wanted either a round bend or Bartleet bend.
My point it that just because Glasso and Wentworth did not tie on dee style hooks it wasn't because they preferred the way the flies looked on the low-water hooks they used, it was because they could not get the longer-shanked dee style hooks. Which means, we need to be careful about making statements regarding the two of them not tying on longer hooks because they wanted the flies to be shorter/smaller. We need to take a look at what was available and not available during the time Glasso was developing and tying his flies.
I've been fortunate to have seen quite a few Glasso tied spey flies and several of Glasso tied classic salmon flies. Despite the popular myth that Glasso never tied a classic salmon fly on a hook larger than a #1, I've held in my hands two Rangers (a BLACK RANGER and a DURHAM RANGER) Glasso tied and the hooks he tie them on were huge, as in #2/0, Carrie Stevens Partridge 10x long, hooks that he cut the eye off of. Both of these flies were framed and had been given to the mechanic from Forks, WA who worked on Glasso's Porche as thank you gifts for keeping his Porche running in top condition. Both these flies were tied in the early 1960's.
In fact, I'll venture to say that until Alec Jackson (and Dave McNeese with the Partridge CS/10, which Dave says Partridge never did correctly) had their respective hooks (the AJ Spey Hook and Partridge CS/10) made by Partridge (yes Alec originally had his hooks made by Partridge, not Daiichi) in the early 1980's, there weren't any suitable, long-shank dee style hooks readily available on the market. There was quite a long number of years where this was the case. So it is no wonder to me at all that Glasso and Wentworth didn't tie on them.