I want to remove a forum from the list of searchable forums in the "Advanced Search"
 

I want to remove a forum from the list of searchable forums in the "Advanced Search", but I can't seem to find the place where vb compiles the list of forums it will allow the user to see. I'd ideally like to do this via hooks instead of hacking up the actual vb code itself..

Can anyone point me in the right direction of which hook and/or variables, any help whatsoever is appreciated!!

How about Forum Manager > select the forum to edit > Index New Posts in Search Engine (Setting this to 'No' will prevent anyone from being able to search in this forum) > No

Is that what you want to do?

Well, I want to actually do this using a plugin system, is there a hook to a place where the list is actually constructed? If so, then I can probably figure out how to remove the forum from the list

You can look in the search page under do=whatever for your particular search and see what plugins there are.