Circle Hook Make Rounds With Anglers Design Aids Survival Rate Of Fish That Are Caught, Released

Angler Larry Dahlberg of ESPN fame believes the biggest revolution in fishing is the resurgence of a odd-looking hook with a bent point.

It’s called a circle hook and, until recently, it was used primarily by commercial saltwater fishermen for halibut, tuna and other large fish. But sportfishing anglers have seized it as a method of reducing the deaths of fish such as bass and walleyes after they have been released.

Dahlberg, who lives in Minnesota, is leading the charge to get anglers to use the fish-saving hooks.

“In my view, circle hooks will be more important to fishing than the concept of catch-and-release,” said Dahlberg, who hosts ESPN’s “The Hunt For Big Fish.”

At first glance, circle hooks don’t look like they would catch your finger, much less a fish. The hook point makes a radical turn inward, toward the shank, like your index finger wrapped around a trigger.

Most hook points aim upward and run parallel to the shank, giving the hook ample opportunity to penetrate a fish’s mouth.

The circle hook works differently. It is not designed to hook immediately, but to follow pressure from the fishing line and embed in the corner of the fish’s mouth.

Jeff Pierce, sales coordinator for Mustad, said he recently took part in Florida circle-hook tests that fed live bait to voracious saltwater fish. The fish were allowed to swim with the bait for a timed five minutes before the reel was engaged. Though the fish had obviously swallowed the bait, none was hooked deep.

Pierce said the circle hook is designed not to snag soft tissues. Though a fish might have the hook in its stomach, tension on the line pulls the hook back up through the fish’s gullet. Pressure on the hook eye causes the hook to cant in a cam-like action, almost invariably snagging the corner of the fish’s mouth as the hook exits.

Ironically, modern circle hooks were developed 30 years ago by long-line commercial fishermen. They wanted a hook the fish could not escape, though they often have hours in which to struggle. Commercial fishermen also wanted a hook that would not damage a hooked fish’s gills or cause other bleeding that would attract sharks.

“A circle hook enables an angler to hook a fish in the lip, making releasing the fish easy and post-release mortality is almost nil,” Dahlberg said. “The most obvious place it works is with live bait, where fish are apt to swallow a hook.”

Hook manufacturers are seizing upon anglers’ desire to reduce harming fish by making circle hooks available in sportfishing sizes such as No. 4, 6 and 8, although there are still no firm industry standards for sizing the hooks.

By late summer, Pierce said, Mustad plans to introduce the smallest and lightest-wire circle hooks ever made. They’re designed for crappie and bluegill. Pierce has also been experimenting with flies tied on light-wire circle hooks and reports excellent results.

Eagle Claw and Daiichi also have entered the circle hook market, with Eagle Claw leading the way with the greatest variety of sizes and styles.

Do circle hooks lessen hooking percentages? Dahlberg says no. Last fall, he and his wife fished for smallmouth on the St. Croix River using night crawlers and circle hooks. Smallmouth bass are vulnerable to live bait and prone to deeply swallowing hooks. After three days of fishing and 60 strikes, Dahlberg said they hooked and landed 90 percent of the smallmouth that ate their nightcrawlers.

Each one was hooked in the corner of the lip, even though they purposely allowed the fish to keep the bait long enough to swallow it.

Dick Sternberg, a noted Minnesota fishing writer and walleye expert, isn’t convinced circle hooks have broad applications. He used them last year while fishing walleyes in a river and found himself missing nearly every strike.

“I had no luck whatsoever,” Sternberg said. “I ended up taking out my pliers and straightening the damn things out.”

The problem, Dahlberg said, was Sternberg was fishing in a river where fish tend to orient themselves upstream. The circle hook works on the premise that the fish picks up the bait and turns away from the angler, which happens in nearly all live-bait situations except those in which fish are pointed upstream.

Also, Sterberg was testing the hooks in winter, when walleyes tend to be picky eaters. Circle hooks tend to work better on more aggressive fish.

Although circle hooks make sense for live-bait fishermen, Pierce said they’re being adapted by bass fishermen who fish with Carolina-rigged plastic worms or floating worms. Bass are often hooked deep on Carolina rigs because they swallow the realistic-feeling lure before the angler feels the bite and sets the hook.

A hooking mortality study done by Texas Parks and Wildlife indicated that Carolina-rigged plastic worms resulted in higher catch-and-release mortality than live bait.

Offshore big-game fishermen are using circle hooks on soft plastic lures for marlin and sailfish. They report landing more of the fish that bite. Another application, Pierce said, is fishing for toothy saltwater denizens like sharks and king mackerel.

“Because the fish are hooked in the corner of the mouth where their teeth are not in contact with the line, fishermen are using circle hooks with heavy monofilament leader instead of the usual wire leader,” Pierce said. “They get more bites with the monofilament leader.”

Perhaps the biggest disadvantage circle hooks pose to anglers is that they require more patience. When the fish picks up a bait, you allow it to take it as long as possible, Dahlberg said.

You don’t set the hook, either. That simply pops the hook and bait out of the fish’s mouth. Instead, you reel the fish in slowly. The circle hooks turns in the fish’s mouth and grabs the first fleshy protrusion it reaches - typically the hard cartilege in the corner of the lip.

“Let him eat it (after the pick up),” Dahlberg advised. “You let him eat just like you would with a normal hook. Then you just start reeling at a medium speed.”

Because circle hooks resist snagging, they are handy in heavy cover.

Dahlberg demonstrated this at a seminar at a sportsmen’s show in March. He dropped a circle hook attached to string down his pants and let it run to the bottom of his pant leg. After telling the audience about the hook down his pants, he quickly yanked on the string and pulled the hook out.

“It worked because I wasn’t wearing any underwear,” he said.

Such are the risks Dahlberg is willing to take to promote circle hooks as a means of releasing fish to swim again.

“It’s really the responsible thing to do to use these hooks,” he said.