Circle hooks on lures ?

[Cranfield]

Has anyone replaced the treble hooks on a lure with a circle hook, or used circle hooks with jelly worm baits ?

Did it work ?

As you can't "strike" with a circle hook , I wonder if the fish taking the lure is the same action as a "strike" and therefore the hook doesn't set.

[Chalk]

Florida Sportsman had an article on using circle hooks with soft jerk baits...All the big money sailfish and marlin tournaments offer bonus points for using circle hooks as well...Ya know how I feel about circle hooks

[Atticus]

I don't think I would put them on a plug. Thats just me.

[drayno]

The only time I don't use circle hooks are on plugs that come with Treble hooks and on soft plastic that seem to work best with a weighted head. When I fish fresh water I use worm hooks on my plastic worms. On all my live bait I use circle hooks. I don't know how well they would work on lures. I figure that if they worked well manufacturers would start making them that way. Then again they may be the last to make the move.


Drayno

[Cranfield]

I fish a lot for northern pike and occasionally use lures (rather than dead bait), especially on new waters as it gives me something to do when walking the banks.

As is often the case, the smaller lures catch the larger fish and these lures can get inhaled well down a big pike.
Circle hooks could be the answer if they worked.

A chap who lives in North Carolina, claims to have success using circle hooks on spinning lures and rubber worms, for bass.
I can imagine the jelly worm situation working , as there is no "strike" involved, but as a spinning lure is normally retrieved at some speed, I would have thought the fish hitting it would constitute the same effect as the angler "striking", thereby causing the hook not to set.

So, I was hoping that someone had tried it for trout, or redfish.

Chalk mentionms that some catch and release billfish tournaments, give extra points for the use of circle hooks.
As these fish are all caught trolling at speed, this also sounds strange.

[Chalk]

The article I mentioned was for redfish and trout..The author had cronic shoulder problems and couldn't afford to set a hook anymore and switched to circles to keep fishing....

[qoutrage]

My first encounter with circles was bottom fishing for halibut in Alaska. Generally, halibut seem to vigoriously gobbles up the bait rather than a strike as such.
I have used them for trout with limited success. It seems the bite has to be very aggressive for them to be effective, and no doubt you miss more fish than with a standard hook. My thought is the point is too far inside the radius of the hook.
Has anyone here ever tried to bend the point out to see, if it would be more likely to penitrate the inside of the mouth easier on a strike??
I have given this some thought, because what I do like about circles, is once you get a fish on, you seldom loose it in the fight.

Invent a better mousetrap (circle hook) and the world will beat a path to your door..

[Cranfield]

Circle hooks are not widely used here and when I was introduced to them for bait fishing in the US, I was very impressed.
Once you get use to not striking and just reeling into the fish, they are very effective.

My only concern is, that they can be difficult to remove from "thick lipped" fish, without causing damage.
Which if the fish are to be returned, is undesirable.

[BKTomblin Jr]

I feel like we've discussed this before but to me the best part about fishin is the fight & I believe if more folks will stand-by "limits" we'll all be alright

[rev]

I sometimes use circle hooks with soft-plastic jerk baits--it works great, provided there is not too much floating grass. I sometimes have trouble setting the hook with an unweighted jerk bait due to the slack I throw in the line when I twitch. Circle hooks take care of that--instead of worrying about reeling in slack then striking, all you do is reel. The problem with this, though, is it works best when the circle hook is hooked through the nose of the bait with the point exposed--you lose the weedlessness of the jerk bait.

By the way, most of the contestants in sailfish tournaments use live bait--goggle eyes and blue runners, either slow trolled or on kites. You still have to drop back to the fish while he gets his mouth around it, so the speed of the boat will not set the hook as in ordinary trolling.

[Cranfield]

rev, I agree it seems essential to have the circle hook point exposed, or you can lose hook ups.

I have only fished for billfish trolling ballyhoo rigged on skirts, or lures.
But, I can see that a circle hook would work well, in the live bait situation you describe.

[sea-grits]

Keep in mind the mechanics of how a circle hook, hooks a fish -- fish has to swallow the bait/hook, turn, swim away so that the line is at least perpendicular to the axis of the fish (or less of an angle from perpendicular to the fish, viewed towards the fish's tail). That is why no jerk is necessary to set the hook (jerk just pulls the hook out of fish's mouth, before it turns, without point/barb hooking onto its lip).
C-hooks on lures rarely hook a fish on a moving lure because the fish has little time to turn to set the hook before the lure/c-hook gets pulled out of its mouth!
Worried about j-hook being taken too deep -- use bigger j-hook with barb bent down and a long shank to facilitate grabbing hook, pushing it down to free hook point, twisting hook point away from the inside surface of fish's mouth and pulling it out without hooking into fish's mouth again!
C-hooks are designed to lip hook fish when statically fished with bait and the fish swallows the bait/c-hook, reverses its direction, swims off and hooks itself on the lip. Elementary, my dear Watson!