Several years ago I tried circle hooks and found that I lost a lot of fish and switched back. Now it dawns on me that I wasn't hooking the bait properly.
With straight shanked hooks I bury the hook in the bait. In the process of setting the hook it would break through the meat and hook the fish. Because you're not suppose to set the hook with a circle, should I have been leaving the hook exposed?
Hi Tony,
Yeah I made that mistake as well last year. I had much better success when I started leaving a good amount of hook/barb exposed. I hook it just well enough that it doesn't come off during the cast.
I guess it was my human intuition that told me to bury the hook. If I felt something sharp in my mouth, I'd spit it out real quick.
OK, I'll try that. I hate it when I gut hook a fish.
I was watching some of the re-runs on OLN of that shark fishing tournament and saw how they were baiting a circle hook. The other thing I noticed with those using the circle hook was that after allowing the shark to take the bait, they motored up and full throttled to engage the hook.
The way I look at is this,,, by the time the hook is deep enough into their mouth for them to feel it, it's deep enough to set in the corner of the mouth. If they suck it in much deeper, you're looking at a gut hooked fish when you bring it in.
Just remember to lift not jam.It takes getting use to.IMHO I like the J hooks better for chunk.I like to liveline with circle hooks just my likings. cool_blue.gif Barb out for liveline as well.for Stripers headbang.gif
i try and use only heads. blues have been annoying as hell this year. i go through one eye and out the other. and plenty of hook sticking out. i use 10/0 sometiems. i know plenty of people are gonna disagree with alot of that. but ive been hooking into some nice fish so far this year. heres one from last night on a head hooked like that. 3 total for me. 2 for my friend. all on bunker heads. all around 39 inches. one about 42 maybe 44.
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