circle hooks?

[bigwiz]

who likes em ive seen a few fish lost on em and a couple caught on em is there a trick are what? graemlins/1zhelp.gif

[Hogmaster]

Chad,

The Halibut charters I have been on in Alaska use them exclusively and always with good success. They always tell the fishermen to wait until they are getting the rod pulled into the water but then just lean back into the hookset.

I have never used them for sturgeon though and am curious too. Do people use them for that down here?

[bigwiz]

ive seen em used behind glo's and man they wernt getting very good hook ups i use the octupus and do pretty good for steelhead and salmon so iam not gonna change my set up i think my precentile is pretty good so

[Myles]

From what I've read cricle hooks are reported to decrease the deep hooking of fish (swallowed hooks), by about 75%. My impression is they were created to cut down on mortality rates of released fish.

As far as sturgeon, I believe barbless hooks are required.

myles

[Hogmaster]

Ahh, good point Myles. Since the barb on a circle hook is an important part of how it works, it probably precludes is working well for sturgeon...

[Ramstrong]

I think there's a bit of mis communication here. Traditional circle hooks (used for commercial long lining) are designed so the fish hooks itself and has a barb. If I'm not mistaken chad was asking about the gammi circle hooks. They're essentialy a J hook with a wider bend. They're barbless and designed to hold better once hooked. They worked well for us the last two years out in the salt, but some fish were definately farmed. I think the landing percentage is higher with the gammi circle in comparison to an octopus with the barb pinched down. Now if you keep the barb (where legal) I'd be sticking with the octopus.

[BuKuBass]

I've been using Pierce circle hooks(available thru Cabela's) sizes 2-2/0 for drop-shotting for smallmouth for 3-4 years. I lost fewer than two dozen bass out of 638(12" or bigger) caught via DSing last year. Don't jerk; use a s-l-o-w(one thousand one) sweepset or just reel. Most fish were hooked in the corner of the jaw.

BuKuBass