C-hooks in artificial lures

[Matador]

An amazing post by Capt Fred again! Where were you when I was getting skunked in Islamorada ten years ago???

I'm sitting at my station cutting and rerigging again!

I confess that I spend ten minutes reading and researching for every one I spend on the water.

Capt Fred: What do you think of the Williamson rubber 'hoo lures? Bunk? I have two spreader bars that I run with a skirted version as my straggler/target. I can't follow some of the great ideas I see here on my relatively smaller Pursuit 2470 but I am keen to incorporate any "pearls" as best I can.

I know folks refer to trolling on the waves and all that but I just don't get how to translate that from some big Bertram or Hatteras to my much smaller boat. How many feet behind my boat should my spreaders go? and the toad?

We came up with a toad before I read about them... 2L coke bottles with mineral oil and glitter inside... cheap and easy like my first wife.

[Squidnation]

Originally Posted by Matador

An amazing post by Capt Fred again! Where were you when I was getting skunked in Islamorada ten years ago???

I'm sitting at my station cutting and rerigging again!

I confess that I spend ten minutes reading and researching for every one I spend on the water.

Capt Fred: What do you think of the Williamson rubber 'hoo lures? Bunk? I have two spreader bars that I run with a skirted version as my straggler/target. I can't follow some of the great ideas I see here on my relatively smaller Pursuit 2470 but I am keen to incorporate any "pearls" as best I can.

I know folks refer to trolling on the waves and all that but I just don't get how to translate that from some big Bertram or Hatteras to my much smaller boat. How many feet behind my boat should my spreaders go? and the toad?

We came up with a toad before I read about them... 2L coke bottles with mineral oil and glitter inside... cheap and easy like my first wife.

Now that is a cool idea. Thanks for the tip!

[Squidnation]

[quote=Bert Rodgers;324012]

Originally Posted by Squidnation

As far as skirted hoos with a sea witch or something. I would rig them the same in this video and pull the hook in front of the seawitch.

QUOTE]

Matt on the Hattitude simply cut the top off of an octipus skirt so the the whole was large enough to slide over the swivel of his guac/style rig. His rig placed the swivels where the pin would be in a pin rig instead of between the eyes.

The skirted bait swam well but it did tend to come out of the water a little more than the nakeds. On a calm day I think that may be a good thing. How many times have you seen a skipped bait with a pink skirt get hot? I have.

Bert

Bert we did that in Costa with Whitey on the Pescadora the day after the WBS. It was also very effective.

[Captain Fred Archer]

Wow! Utter silence, then a mini deluge of commentary. Seems that some are thinking about this stuff that I am presenting. That and the application of logic are the keys to developing a willingness to change. That is good. For me, I want to catch them all and I have always thought that there was a better way of doing it than I was then and I have always relentlessly searched for it. And once finding it, looking for the next change that will help me toward my goal.

Squid, my hookup ratio and more importantly, my landing ratios are nigh onto 100% on the circles in lures, as are those of the tiny number of others who I know that run the circles in the fakes. The only J hook numbers that approached them, and they too were almost impossibly high, came with the scorpion rigged stiff J rigging and the different way that they should be fished. Those who have read New Secrets of Modern Trolling know all of the details of that technique. It's only drawback was that it injured some fish very badly that might not have made it after release. Not so with the circles and as one who has only been personally responsible for killing three billfish out of the thousands that I have caught or captained on, that is very important to me personally. Killing marlin is like killing mockingbirds as far as I'm concerned and is something that I have avoided doing for all of my life, beginning long before "marlin hugging" became the vogue.

The circles produced mind-bending hookup and landing ratios too. For those of you who say, "So what were they?", my reply is the same as it always has been...you would not believe me if I told you, so I'm not doing it.

One of the beauties of a lure rigged with a C hook is that if a marlin misses getting hooked up on it - and some do, of course - they don't get jabbed or ripped in the face or mouth by a sharp hook or hooks. Vizualize that for a second. Say you were biting hungrily down on a nice, fat cheeseburger and as you were, you were suddently jabbed in the mouth with a sharp needle, or worse yet, had one go in a ways and then rip its way out of your mouth. Would you take another bite? I think not and the same thing happens with goodly numbers of J-jabbed marlin.

But when one misses a C hooked lure, it now becomes a "bait" (teaser) that has "escaped" and the apex predator marlin's - like a lion or a tiger's - instincts take over and it focuses 100% on catching and killing the prey that he thinks he has wounded and that has somehow escaped before another predator grabs it. And with a circle hook he can miss a couple more times and the only thing that happens is that he rachets up to the most intense fish fury and determination that you have ever seen, with blue marlin cranking their already frightful attack aggression up to absolutely astonishing levels that I cannot describe and that you will only believe when you see it for yourself!

Leave 'em alone and don't screw around doing anything but driving straight and watching the show and you will wind up hooking that insane fish. And because he's on a circle hook, he will be yours.

Sterling...you don't need Evelyn. My stuff is very, very different and I try to include all relevent input with it so that what I am trying to teach is not only learned, but the principles, logic, and experience behind it is clear. That is a helluva lot harder to do within the confines of an internet post and is why I write books that cover this and many other subjects, many being emerging ones that aren't common knowledge among most fishermen. I do so in great detail and with prolific illustrations and photographs. Frankly, I am constantly astounded by how few of the members here take advantage of those storehouses of information. I for one do read everything and anything about blue water and marlin fishing that I can get my hands on, no matter who has written it or where. And if whatever it is was, was written by a practicing fisherman with a lot of experience, I get and read it RIGHT NOW! That is the fastest and best way that I know of for acquiring fishing knowledge.

Until one is convinced of the logic and perfect sense of something new, they are not going to try it, or will do so half-heartedly, so take your time and let the knowledge soak in and challenge it with what you know or think with a constant dose of logic and you will develop the confidence to start experimenting with and adopting the leading edge, instead of the, "this is how we have always done it" bullshit that the infamous "Masters of Repitition" babble away with. History is what we did today...the future is what we do tomorrow and we can either repeat history, or try to improve on it. Which way one wants to go is up to him.

As far as the measured drop backs are concerned, we set them up two ways and experience zero tangle problems or inept angler disasters. The first and most common way for us is to simply allow the loop in the line from the drop back bait and the tip of the pitch rod to flow back behind the boat as we troll. Remember, we do not troll our teaser pods very far back, so the drop backs themselves are not very long and the loop doesn't run very far back either. Our pitch rods are put in the angled rod holders meant for 'rigger lines or for running the flats a little wider than the upright corner holders do.

The other way, which we only use if there's a lot of crosswind, is to place the pitch bait line in buckets of water that are bungied into the stern cockpit corners. This works well too.

The reason for keeping the pitch baits in the boat, instead of behind the teaser pods (which if we are going to do, we attach the chasebaits to the the little, light MarlinBars and just catch whatever comes along on them) is the selectivity factor. If you run bars or keep the pitch baits in the water, you are going to catch whatever comes along and because of the fish-raising power of big bait pods concentrated in the sweet spots, you are going to raise more fish than you have been raising running spread out, skinny little patterns of single lures or daisy chains. So, if you are a "universal fisherman" who wants to catch whatever you raise, arm the bars and run them right where you have them now.

If you bait and switch my way and are after blue or whte marlin exclusively or are in a tournament and don't want to catch anything but billlfish, ignore and don't bait anything else. In a tournament, eliminating those time-wasting other fish is a huge key to restricting your valuable fishing time to potential winners only. If there is a tuna category and you would like to reserve a (very good) chance of hooking any tanks that you raise, bait them, but bait no other tunas or other species, unless there is a division for mahis and a huge bull shows up on your teasers. All that I can say about THIS is, Mister, if we are ever in a tournament together, I hope and pray that you aren't using this technique and if you aren't, me and my crew will sit right down with you and help you rig up those ballyhoo that you are going to load up a big bait cooler with. "Nice guys"? Why, of course! We want you to have a lot of fun and catch a lot of fish, know what I mean?

Matador, I have never had much success with any of the rubber artificial ballyhoo lures, made by anyone. And with ballyhoo being such a difficult commodity to acquire down in Cabo, I've tried them all and given them a fair shake because I really wanted them to work. They catch some fish, but nothing outstanding. I am very partial to our Ballyhoo ProSquids or HooHats, with or without bait here.

I can't speak for other spreaderbars, but our SuperBar and MarlinBars have been designed to run with the bars up and out of the water, regardless of if they are being run off of flats, shorts, or long riggers. Lure placement is part of the voodoo that some profess and babble on about. Not me, at least not when it comes to Super or MarlinBars. The only criteria is that you run the bar just in front of whatever wave you put it on and let the bait pod and chasebait lay out where they will. The only other criteria is, if a bar starts going into the water, you are fishing it too far back. Move it up a wave if it's doing that. And if you want to run a bar impossibly far back, get yourself one of our incredible new Spider RuckusRaiser Bugs. In my sincere opinion, they are the most significant thing that has happened in spreaderbars in many decades. They blow my mind with both how far back or how fast they can be trolled.

As far as how far back to run our bars, that depends a bit on sea conditions as far as running a spread of armed bars are concerned. Under normal circumstances I would put out all matching pairs of bars, starting with the first or second wake wave and placing the rest on the next wave and the next, and so on. If you want to run one way back, be my guest. I don't, but if I did it would be a RuckusRaiser with the same squids on it as the ones in the main pattern. If it sounds like I run my bars closer to the boat and closer together than most, I do. Forget all the bullshit about not running the lures too close and getting them spread well apart and just fish this way for a while and you won't go back to the "far, wide, skinny" spreads that aren't natural and that don't raise and catch anywhere near as many fish as what I have just described will.

When it comes to MarlinBar teasers, be it a big, medium, or small boat, they should be run short, tight, and in the sweet spots, as shown.

I am not familiar with the teaser that you are running, so I can't offer any advice on it. Toads, no question.

Keep reading and studying, Matador, and you will wind up fishing circles around those with their heads in the sand who because they have shut their minds to new things and compensating for radically diminished fisheries are doomed to repeating the SOS, over and over again.

Bert...I rarely fish an unweighted 'hoo, be it naked or under a hat of some kind. My baits get less beat up and offer an easier-to-see (the reason why bait jumps in the first place - they are harder to see in the air and don't break out in jumping for joy when predators are hot on their tails) target for the fish. As far as fish attracting surface disturbance is concerned, 99% of the time I am running the 'hoos behind MarlinBars and they do a great job of attracting attention to the straggling bait. I am showing my two favorites, weighted (the weight can be removed too) HooHats and Ballyhoo ProSquid hats. Both can easily be rigged to run and "out front" circle and I have a way of "stiff bridling" a short rig for running the circle hook in the squid.

I hope I've answered everybody. The picts that follow are, in order, a better shot of how we scorpion rigged circles in our lures, the lure families that can be rigged this way, a "HooHat" and a ProSquid with a ballyhoo on it and a shot of a bar running in the right spot.

Last but not least, this kind of stuff is how I earn a very meager living. The facts are that what I have written here is worth some pretty serious magazine article money that I won't be getting because of posting it here. And more than that, I want you to pick through and study the complete information on things like this. They appear in my books. I am glad to be able to try to help here, but please, if you want to get into the real meat of this and other things that will help you catch more fish, buy my books!

[Patudo]

After reading the other thread on removing circle hooks- what's the recommended way of removing these large circle hooks from billfish? That style of big commercial longliner circle hook is plated with cadmium or similar anti-corrosive tinning - not good news for the fish if left in. And as they're heavy wire, they won't rust out as quickly as the light wire circles (and even those take longer to deteriorate than many think, as the tests show).

[Captain Fred Archer]

Excellent question, Dus...Patudo.

First, one needs to bear in mind that the vast majority of fish hooked on the circles that I use are hooked in the jaw corner. And most of the time they are not really "hooked" at all, at least not in the flesh. The right circle hook, a dull one, doesn't penetrate flesh, it slides to the corner or another part of the jaw ridge and wraps itself around it (the "monkey and the football" thing again - for you, Bert!)

And when it comes time to unhook and release the fish, that big hook is simply a dream to apply an ARC de-hooker to, a tool that I have been using since long before their introduction and an Accurate Release Stick for at least ten years before the ARC and push the hook out of the fish fast and clean. As shown, I remove the barbs that don't do any good as far as keeping fish attached, but that are a monster pain in the butt when you are trying to release fish.

A further good thing about removing the barbs on this kind of hook is that with it and the line and lure pressure removed, the fish can easily shake it if we have an especially wild fish that might get hurt on the boat even if we are using the ARC and we cut him off. I have actually seen a released fish shake up top after he had been cut off and watched the hook spin out and away. On another unforgettable occasion we cut off a crazy, amped-up little blue (probably a male fish) that jumped right alongside after the cut was made and he not only threw the big circle, it dinged off of the angler in the 'pit. He kept it for a momento. Would make for a pretty cool necklace and I wish I'd had one dinged off of me too. And heck, the thing wouldn't even jab you with that dull point.

No matter what circle or tinned hooks are coated with, I don't think that we do any damage to the vast majority - and very likely every marlin that we release on them. I love marlin too much and am far too tuned into releasing healthy fish to go around poisoning them with hooks left in them.

Good question. Glad to answer.

The picture below is not one that I took. That black looks pretty tired. I'd have probably cut him off before he got like that.

Too bad nobody has written a book with all kinds of lure fishing with circle hooks information in it. Oh, that's right, I have. Might save some time re-inventing the wheel. Oh well.

Cheers!

[johndtuttle]

Capt Fred,

quick question: why a 'dull' circle hook? I can only guess this is to prevent 'sticking' the fish on a weak bite so they will get more aggressive?

[Captain Fred Archer]

John D,

Roger. A dull hook because a circle hook is meant to wrap around jaw hinges and edges, not penetrate and cut into flesh. Marlin, being "grab, crush and gobble" feeders will flip a circle hook on its side when they bite down to crush it where and how I rig it. Then I want it to slide across the roof or floor of its mouth without sticking and starting to penetrate that roof or floor on its way to its intended target. So it gets there, wraps, and that's a caught fish, thank you!

If the fish doesn't get hooked on the first shot, and some don't, they don't get stabbed or stuck by a sharp hook point and the lure has now become a teaser and vicious re-bites "to kill that bait the marlin crippled and it got away somehow" almost always happen.

Now, anyone else can do it any way that they want to, but that's how I do what I do and why.

Hope that explained things.

[johndtuttle]

Capt Fred,

Are you using the Mustad Model #39965D circle hook, and looks like about 12/0?

Thanks for all your posts, ignore all those barely literate morons that have the attention span of gnats who complain about long posts. As if the effort of reading them is even 1/10 the effort of writing them...

[Captain Fred Archer]

John,

Thank you for the nice words.

"Barely literate morons that have the attention span of gnats who complain about long posts"?! You sure don't post much, but when you do, you certainly have a way about you! Holey cow! But I hear ya and you are entitled to your opinion, of course.

As far as those plastic tunas and such are concerned, they're pretty, but very bad things happen to them when they come in contact with a toothy critter. Mucho dinero para poquito para este pescador.

Here is one that only crossed paths with one major wahoo. Hasta la vista, baby! Next stop, marina dumpster. Net effect, kind of like fishing with a thirty dollar or more (?) ballyhoo. I only have that happen once! I'll take what follows, thank you!

Second pict down, a WahooBar and the damage it did.

How to truly professionally rig a chasebait for wahoo. Kinda like long posts, this rigging takes time and attention to do, but it is what our customers get and why many of them come back to us for more.