CIRCLE HOOKS

[jsb]

I don't fish live bait much so I do have a couple of questions on hooks for live bait. I was using circle hooks the other day but it seemed to me I was not getting good hook ups. It seen to me it was catching on the turned part of hook and coming out of their mouth. The ones I hooked were all stuck in the top of the mouth. I switched to a wide gap finesse hook and seemed to get a better hook up. This could just be me but what is other people opinion on live bait hooks?RELEASE THEM ALIVEemoToast

 

[MadBomber]

I like a 1/0 aberdeen light wire hook for drifting shiners.  I do not let them run with it!  I hardly ever deep hook a smallmouth, circle hooks are too heavy in my opinion.

 

[MrWiskers]

I was using a 1/0 Gamakatsu cicle back in October fishing shiners around the bridge pillings. It worked really well as long as you don't set the hook. Probably the hardest thing to to for a bass fisherman is not set the hook. I was fishing the shiners with no weight at all, just freeline and we might have had 2 fish out of 200 hunderd swallow the hook. You will miss one here and there but this are probably fish you would have missed not matter what kind of hook you are using. These are ussually smaller fish that grab the shiners sideways. We actually saw this happen numerous times. They do a good job of killing the shiner.

 

[Liveliner]

I prefer Circle hooks. My percentage of hook-ups with circle hooks is much higher than with "J" hooks.

Two things that are important with circle hooks - do not rig your bait on the hook where it will block the hook gap and do not set the hook by jerking the rod.

To get a good hook set with a circle, take up the slack and stop the spool. When the fish pulls against a tight line it will turn him around. At that point he is hooked 90% of the time.

 

[bass15]

Try Mustad's Mosquito Circle hooks. Light weight , and super sharp. Sportsmans Warehouse or mail order. Circle hooks are the way to go . It just scares me to think of hooking an 8lb or larger Smallmouth on an aberdeen hook. Just to much fish to steel ratio to suit me . I work to hard to get that biggum to hit to lose it with a simple bent hook from a beside the boat surge that me or my drag can't handle. We all know that if you fish long enough something like that will happen.

 

[Guest]

I'm with madbomber on the lightwire, took my son beloe the dam yesterday and lost 4 fish right off the bat useing the owner circle hooks, swithed up to the light wire aberdeen hooks and startrd making a connection.I guess it's all in what a person is used to useing, I just seem to lose too many with the circle hooks