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  1. #1

    Default circle hooks 2

    finally got to try out the circle hook clousers i tied up, and heres what i experienced.

    when i first started, i missed a lot of fish. i think it was beacause i was stripping when they hit the fly, and it was equivalent to setting the hook, which doesnt work with a circle hook. i slowed down my retrieve, gave it a smaller strip with long pauses and kept some slack in my line at all times. this seemed to do the trick, i immediately started hooking up. the trick was to let the fish come tight on the line as the fly swung in the current. it was a lot like swinging a brace of wets in the current for freshwater trout.

    i guess i should have mentioned when i started that i was pursuing salt water speckled trout.

    things seemed to work fairly well, as long as the fish were agressive. when they lost their agressiveness, i had to speed up the retrieve, and this resulted in missed fish. as long as i could keep the retrieve at a liesure pace with plenty of pauses, i dont think my hook up ratio was affected. one problem i did have was, if i hooked a fish deep, it was a given that i was going to injure the fish. deeply hooked circle hooks are tough to remove. i think the deep hooked fish were caused by me stripping at the precise moment the fish inhaled the fly. all the deep hooked fish were hooked the same way, deep down the throat.

    of 30 fish, i had 3 deep hooked. this gave me a 10% mortality rate which is twice what i was getting with "J" hooks. i think this is caused by how difficult it is to remove a circle hook that is deep down the fishes throat. allthough i had a lot more deep hooked fish with the "J" hooks the removal is pretty easy, they are barbless, and pop out fairly easy when you run your finger down the line and give them a push. the only down side is at the end of a night of fishing you finger looks like ground beef, which was one of the reasons for trying the circle hooks to begin with.

    finall conclusions, right wrong or indifferent,

    1. if fish are not agressively feeding, it is difficult to get them to hit the fly and hold it , which is whats needed if your going to hook up with a circle hook.
    2. the mortality rate with the circle hook is twice that which i have experiencd with a "J" hook.
    3. "J" hooks are easier to remove from a deeply hooked fish than circle hooks are.
    4. need to experiment a little more with the circle hook, and see what happens when i crimp the barb down.
    5 need to experiment with a hook disgorger for clouser minnows.

    circle hook, "electric chicken clouser"
    Hook: owner #4, model, 5114T-071
    Thread: fire orange
    Eyes: extra small pearl dumbell eyes
    Body: pink wool , dubbed
    Tail: pink bucktail
    Wing: chartruse bucktail over 6 strands of silver flashabou

    normally for a standard "J" hook i use a size 6 or 8 mustad 34007, whic seems a lot smaller than the size 4 circle hook, but the shank of the circle hooks is so short it dictated going to the larger size. i dont think this size difference had any effect.

    i will try and get my wife to post some pictures of the pattern at a later date.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
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    That sounds like a nice fly. Have you tried it on warmwater fish?

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
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    I've been fishing circle hooks for a long time now. While occasinally a really aggressive fish will suck the fly in so hard as to get it wedged behind a gill, causing potentially mortal damage, those are very few and far between and the vast majority are hooked either square in the corner of the mouth or in the upper lip. Having said that, I've never used them on speckled trout before. My experience with traditional j-hooks on warmwater fish was that they got hooked deeply far more often, though still leaving a fairly small number of fish "mortally" hooked. Just my experience for what it's worth.
    If it swims and eats, it'll eat a fly.

  4. #4
    Join Date
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    I was at work when I wrote the response above. Since then, I've had a chance to look up the hook you are using. The overall shape of the hook is very different from the ones I've played with. Mine (mustad c71ss and Eagle Claw L702G) are almost completely circular in the bend. I wonder if that might be responsible for the difference in our experiences. I'm going to get some of the ones you are using and give them a try to see. I'm intrigued.

    Larry-- the electric chicken color scheme is very effective on warmwater fish. I've used it for crappie and smallmouth and had very good results.
    Last edited by Bluegill222; 06-27-2011 at 02:01 PM. Reason: spelin'
    If it swims and eats, it'll eat a fly.

  5. #5

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    bluegill,

    thanks for the second response, ive been trying to figure out what was different also. i started down this road because i felt it would help my mortallit y rate , but my first experience didnt work out that way. ill try some of the hooks youve been using and see if that makes a difference.
    do you have any other things that youve experienced that may be helpfull ?

    thanks

  6. #6
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    Feb 2009
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    Overland Park, Kansas
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    Tim I went and bought some Gamagatzu octapus circle hooks to try. Mustad makes a Demon Circle hook with the same bend as the Eagle claw with the exception that they have a very short shank, and it is a heavy wire hook. If a person was using them for clousers they would be fine, seeing how you only tie torwards the front anyway, but for anything with a body longer than a 1/4" long they would not work well. I picked up a package of the owner circle hooks, and they have alot of hook hanging down that might be a little hard to cover up.

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