C-hooks in artificial lures

[Captain Fred Archer]

This is going to make some who hate my "long-winded posts" nuts, so I urge them to hit the back button and not bother reading it. It will seem like a book because it is from one, one that was written in '04 and '05 and published back in 2005. In the interest of not attracting my usual "sales pitch" label, I am not even going to say what book this excerpt is from.

As always, I apologize for the layout, lack of photos in the body text, etc. that is how book excerpts come out when posted. Sorry, but that's just the way that it is until I get the right software and learn how to duplicate the way that a book is actually laid out here.

Okay, this is all about circle hooks and it touches on something that is discussed in far greater detail in a more recent book that I will get into here if there is enough interest. Here goes...(and please note, I am way more of a smart-ass in my books than I am here). It starts off talking about why Cabo fishermen didn't use ballyhoo until very recently.

AND I REPEAT, IF YOU DON'T LIKE MY LONG POSTS, PLEASE HIT THAT BACK BUTTON, BECAUSE YOU WILL HATE THIS ONE!

THAT WORLDWIDE DISEASE, “FISHING INERTIA.” DO YOU HAVE IT?

Why don’t fishermen there use ballyhoo? First, both the locals and the gringos are live bait freaks who are for the most part unwilling to change their ways. They are the collective victims of a fisherman’s disease that I call, “fishing inertia”.

It is that very same fishing inertia that keeps otherwise intelligent fishermen all over the world from learning and using new techniques that would help them catch a lot more fish and have a helluva lot more fun. You can bet the farm on it and take it to the bank that it’s “Fishing Inertia Disease Syndrome” or “FIDS”, or something far worse and impolite to say if you’re trying to make friends out of the victims of what I am being nice here and calling a disease that is holding fishermen back. It amazes me just how prevalent whatever it is, is!

SYMPTOMS OF THE FISHING INERTIA “DISEASE” (“FIDS”)
The fact that there are still fishermen out there – a lot of them (hint!) – who tie knots instead of swaging when they rig heavy leaders, and that run the risk of injury and death for themselves and their crews by not fishing exclusively with wind-on leaders on their big game tackle amazes me.
That there are a lot of fishermen who still insist on using those double hook rigs that pose such a great threat of painful injuries to their guests and crews, instead of the single hook rigs that have been proven over and over to offer better hookup/landing ratios in the first place and that have likewise proven to be far kinder to the fish than the dangerous doubles, to being almost impossible to snag a fisherman with just freaks me out! I would have thought that just about everyone would have heard about these old advances in rigging, tackle and techniques, but nooo! What’s up with that?

MORE SYMPTOMS OF THIS, UH, UMM, OH YEAH – THIS DISEASE
How about the bait fishermen who are still using old fashioned J hooks in these days of less billfish due to the ravages of the commercial fleets around the world? Talk about FIDS! I can’t help but think that those who haven’t switched must be living under a rock somewhere, not reading anything about fishing in books or magazines, or even turning on the television and watching a salt water fishing show or two! What’s up with that, too?

I’VE BEEN TESTED – AIN’T GOT NO FIDS! AIN’T NO “IFO”, NEITHER!
I for one started writing about circle hooks for bait and lures (and wind-on leaders and bait and switch fishing, and spreader bars and a lot of other stuff that wise fishermen are using and IFO’s are knocking) twelve years ago. Although that was the first information in a book about how well the new hooks worked, the articles and books that I wrote were soon followed by literally hundreds since by others. The articles said the very same thing, right down to extent of publishing the results of literally thousands of billfish caught using circles and J’s that emphatically proved how superior the circles are in all ways when it comes to bait fishing for marlin.

BUNCHA DANGED “IFO’s!”
Yet there are still a lot of “IFO’s” (infrequently fishing others) out there who are badly afflicted by this fishing inertia thing. (I hope that those of you reading this who suffer from what I am writing about realize that I am being exceptionally kind calling this a “disease”, instead of what both of us know I could and maybe even should be calling it!)

Worse than the fact that these people aren’t using circle hooks and the other things mentioned here that have been proven and have been around for years now, is that some of these IFO’s express UPSO’s (uninformed, purely speculative opinions) on some of these things that they, themselves know nothing about, and I mean nothing! Now that we have the Internet, IFO’s giving out UPSO’s have become a real problem because some of them come off like they are sufficiently qualified (from driving a desk, some magazines, or a computer around – not from a lot of hard core fishing and testing), and these UPSO’s spouted by IFO’s are confusing the hell out of a lot of regular fishermen who are trying to expand their knowledge in a sincere and open-minded effort to become more successful.

AS THAT COUNTRY COMEDIAN MIGHT SAY, “YOU’RE AN INERTIA-NECK IF…
After you read or hear that top anglers from around the world have been doing something new that is working great that you yourself have never tried, you say the following or similar words when this new technique is brought up – “I haven’t tried it, but I don’t think that it’s going to work because…” STOP! As Jeff is wont to say in such situations, “Heeere’s your sign, Inertia-Neck (he uses the other, rude word)!”

The longer the new thing has been being reported and proven over and over again to be as superior as it is to what went before, the more signs you earn for batting your gums and consequently disputing research and sharing by true experts who you should be learning from, not laughing at or doubting!

Take this circle hook thing for example. Let’s toss out what I have repeatedly written over the years on the subject as the rantings of an evil purveyor of bullshit because I somehow enjoy misleading the fishermen who spend good money to buy and read the articles and books that I write to learn new things. Or maybe I have a perverse desire to lie to and mislead them, or some kind of a monetary death wish and don’t want them to ever buy and read the stuff that I make my living from again (yeah, right!).

IF I AIN’T A PRO, DONALD DUCK AIN’T A DUCK!
Let’s also forget that I have owned and operated a very popular, expensive, hard core charter boat in a big game fishing paradise for a decade now, that I am the one who runs the boat, rigs the lures and tackle, etc., etc. (That's not bragging, but instead just a statement of fact.) And let’s say that I don’t have to produce great fishing on a near-daily basis for my clients; that I don’t take that very seriously and so am unwilling to develop or try anything new that might help me do that and so on. Or let’s just say that I can’t be trusted on an issue like circle hooks because, let’s see here…Oh, yeah, I have some kind of vested interest in people changing, such as maybe being a major stockholder in “Grampa Willy’s Circle Hook Company”, and I will make gajillions of buckerooties if I can just get a few more people switching over to circle hooks.

Picture not shown.

The one fish that I thought might be a problem to hook on circle hooks on lures was dorado. They are such hi-speed, “snatch-on-the-run” biters that I was pretty certain that we’d miss a lot of them. Well, I was wrong. This is a photo of what was almost without a doubt the first dorado in history to hit a lure (a FatBoy) carrying a circle hook. It was also the very first dorado to get caught on a lure (other than a spreader bar, which we caught a lot of fish on before this) with a circle hook in it. It wasn’t an overly big one, yet you can see for yourself how it wound up getting hooked. To my knowledge, we have never missed or lost a dorado on a circle hook. UpRigger inventor, Captain Bob Melville simply will not fish a lure without one. He has been using them on his charter boats for over ten years now. HE certainly doesn’t have “the disease”. He is a pro.

Picture not shown

Here are a certain someone’s leaders, hung in the front of his cockpit with some well-used light-leadering gloves, ready to go. Clockwise from the upper left corner they are – Marlin leaders and (check it out) circle hooks! Next, there are dorado/tuna hooks. Why, those are circle hooks too! Below them are swordfish leaders and gee, circle hooks again! And there are the mako and wahoo leaders and, howboutdat, circle hooks! A full house! This must be someone who is really paying attention to what’s going on today, eh? Maybe even one of those “pro’s” that those IFO’s say should be trying this kind of stuff before the IFO’s adopt them? That picture was taken when?

Eleven years ago?! Where?

Why, on my working charter boat, of course! You don’t think that I’m some silly FIDS victim or an IFO spouting a buncha UPSO’s, do ya?! Nah! I talk the talk and walk the walk and I KNOW what I’m talking about and trying to teach my fellow fishermen.

HOW ABOUT JUST ONE OTHER PRO WHO STARTED EXPERIMENTING WITH CIRCLE HOOKS BACK AT THE SAME TIME THAT I DID?
Now, how about people (and believe me, I am only picking one of a group of the best in the world) like Tim Choate, who owns and operates Fins and Feathers lodge in Guatemala? You want to talk a lot of billfish and a long history of testing and using circle hooks? Tim’s crews have NOT caught thousands of billfish on circle hooks – they have caught tens of thousands of them since switching over to them over ten years ago!

YEAH, BUT THOSE GUYS DO THE NAUGHTY!
Of course, this guy and his crews probably don’t have any credibility with the FIDS victims, in spite of those tens of thousands of marlin and sailfish because they – ohmygod! – bait and switch the vast majority of their fish! Heck, any FIDS victim worth his horse and buggy knows that that stuff is really crazy and they “don’t think that it would work here because… “Heeere’s another sign, Inertia-Neck!”

I could go on and on, but just mentioning bait and switch fishing and the disease-ridden folk who pooh-pooh it gets me so lathered up that I will never get back to the subject of this chapter, ballyhoo for wahoo.

NO MORE FOOLING AROUND
I do have a couple of pictures and some more comments on circle hooks that I’d like to pass on to you while we’re on the subject. All joking aside, these are radical new lure hooks in many peoples’ minds and I’m sure that there are a lot of questions about them.

I guess the best thing that I can say about circle hooks in lures is that I have been using them with great success for about twelve years now. Captain Bob (R&R) Melville has been using them for almost that long too. Former Cabo charter Captain Bobby Dobson has used them extensively on his SuperBar© chasebaits with great results. Not a lot of others have used them, but when you stop and think about it, the fact that three charter captains who have to produce fish for their clients on a regular basis use circle hooks in their lures, maybe you should start believing in and trying them yourself.

An interesting thing is that Bobby Dobson fished my lures with circle hooks on southern species, while until recently R&R Bob fished Southern California waters where he caught mostly yellowtail, albacore, yellowfin and bigeye on his lures. He discovered that the yellowtail, a very popular western game fish, became a real nuisance when he had limits of them and was trying the same kelp paddies for the dorados that were on some of them too. He finally started trolling his SuperBars and FatBoys by the paddies at ten knots. The yellowtail couldn’t catch them at that speed, but the dorado could.

The bottom line to all of this is that a broad range of fish species have been getting caught by a few anglers on lures with circle hooks in them for over a decade now. The testing is over, the results are in and it’s time for others, especially marlin fishermen to start using them.

WHAT THE HANDFUL OF US HAVE IN COMMON IS IMPORTANT!
Bobby Dobson, Bob Melville and I all have one thing in common that should speak volumes about the effectiveness of circle hooks in lures; we are all charter captains who must catch fish for our clients, or our businesses will suffer or perish! It isn’t as if three guys who own boats and fish every weekend during whatever offshore season exists in their area – very few of which in the entire world that can even remotely approach the year-round, excellent fishing found where Bobby and I and now Bob fish, Cabo San Lucas – started using and catching some fish during their relatively few trips began praising something like circle hooks in lures. I for one would probably try something that these fellows said worked – if I ever heard about it. That’s just the way I am.

THE RIGHT QUALIFICATIONS ARE RARE
If you stop and think about it, there are very few fishermen who can pioneer something like a new kind of hook in lures. First, they have to be lure fishermen or be willing to fish lures a lot while experimenting with something like circle hooks – not bait and switchers or live or dead bait trollers, chunkers, etc. like so many crews in abundant fish areas are (Me too. I am primarily a bait and switcher with spreaderbars, but I devoted a lot of time to experimenting with lures and circles.) The fact of the matter is that the pure or almost pure lure trollers are a significant minority among today’s professionals.

THERE ARE MANY WITH THE WRONG QUALIFICATIONS
A much larger percentage of the average weekend warriors are pure or close to pure lure fishermen (although there really aren’t that many “pure” or “nearly pure” ones), but these guys don’t get to fish anywhere near as much as the pros, most are understandably too paranoid to try anything new on the few chances that they do get to fish, and they don’t have the incentive of having people aboard who have paid a thousand bucks or more to catch fish on their boat that day impatiently waiting for the reels to go off. I know that all of you charter captains reading this understand that.

Picture not shown

My dear friend Bobby Dobson doing his thing. He is actually “setting the hook” with a circle hook in this photo taken about ten years ago. He is one of that tiny group of captains with the right stuff and who lived and fished in the right place to try new things and get fast answers.

As noted, the pioneer also has to fish a large number of days a year in an abundant fishery that is capable of producing daily big game fish action. That last part eliminates a great percentage of charter captains and, of course, private boat anglers.

PIONEERS MARCH TO THE BEAT OF A DIFFERENT DRUMMER
The pioneer has to be one in the first place. By that I mean that pioneers have open minds and inquisitive attitudes that allow them – drive them, actually - to try new things in the first place. Human nature is human nature and the facts are that some of the captains in those few areas of fish abundance and year-round seasons are just as paranoid as the weekend warrior who only gets to fish infrequently. This kind of captain will never be a pioneer. His attitude is, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” He will tell you that he has been catching fish the way that he does forever and “damned if I’m going to waste time fooling around with something that might work, but might not!” Forget about anything new coming from this guy or his ilk, but I still respect them as masters of the game that they do play.

DOWN TO THE HANDFUL WITHIN THE HANDFUL
We have whittled our group of folks who can develop and test new approaches and techniques to charter captains with open minds who live and fish frequently in a year-round, diversified big game fishing paradise who are willing and eager to try new things. There are a few more attributes that the pioneers share, but the last one that I am going to mention is actually the most important one…

THEY MUST BE WILLING TO SHARE AND HAVE THE MEANS TO DO SO!
A fellow with all of the attributes listed here who does not share his discoveries with others cannot be called a true pioneer. He can be called a “closet pioneer”, but even that is saying too much about this kind. The thing is that this kind of fellow is probably more prevalent among charter captains than any other group, including tournament fishermen.

SOME CHARTER CAPTAINS JUST DON’T AND WON’T TELL
Most charter captains are competing with others for a small base of customers and many of the ones who come up with new twists to the game guard that information like the competitive treasure that it is in the dog-eat-dog world of running a charter boat. That is completely understandable, but we have to toss them out of the small group who can really develop, test and refine fishing techniques and tackle. Add the fact that the most effective pioneers just about have to be good communicators like writers or book authors or nowadays good Internet communicators and you are down to the tiny remains from the little handful that we started out with in the first place.

“TOP LOCAL TALENT”
I am not knocking them, but damned few new developments are going to come from the “local hotshot” who catches a dozen or so marlin over a several month season compared to someone who can catch that many in a single day and that’s all there is to it. Nor is all of the work that must be done to develop and test something new going to come from experts who have fished a lot in the right places, but haven’t done so in many years. That, too, is simply the way that things are. We can learn much from the old pros who don’t fish much anymore, but they are not the ones who can go out and develop and test today’s new things on-the-water.

THE COMMUNICATORS
We can’t count on 99% of the communicators – the writers and authors – out there because they don’t own boats, don’t live in the honey holes, don’t have to produce fish or die business-wise and all of the other things that they lack. They are for the most part reporters, not pioneers. I’m not knocking my fellow writers, just doing what I do and calling a spade a spade in this one segment of the writing brotherhood.

I guess what all of this boils down to is, if you wonder why there isn’t an army of fishermen using and praising something new in lure fishing like circle hooks, there are good, logical reasons why that is so.

THE FINAL LESSON
When you do find “a pro-in-the-know”, listen to him, learn from him and then thank him for not keeping what he has learned a secret, but instead, for sharing what he worked so hard to learn with you.

Pssst! C’mere! Ya know, if that feller wrote a book with all of that new stuff in it, ya oughta buy it, ya know?! Kinda rewardin’ him for his actions, but better yet, maybe encouraging him to keep coming up with the good stuff for us all, know what I mean?

Oh, ya do know and ya did buy his books? Good on ya, buddy!

(VERY good on ya! And thank you very much.)

(You-Know-Who)

Picture not shown

You have already seen a wahoo that was caught on a circle hook in a SuperBar on the first page of the spreader bar chapter and a dorado on one in this one. Here’s a striped marlin that is about to be released that was caught on a “marlin lure” with a circle hook in it. The hook positioned in the corner of the mouth is where they usually get hooked. We don’t bill marlin anymore, except for situations like when we needed this picture.

RELEASING HEALTHY BILLFISH
I take releasing billfish seriously. I do not allow marlin or sails to be killed on my boat and my crew and I do our best to make sure that every one that we release is healthy and unharmed. Part and parcel of that is that we do not allow those "Harry holding his marlin in the boat" pictures. Too many fish get fatally injured that way, so if anyone wants a picture of their marlin on my boat, they have to take one with the fish in the water.

Our regular procedure is to use a small, dull gaff to slide the lure up the leader, grab it and the leader in one hand and cut mono leaders instantly with a quick swing of the leader cutting tool that we use, the same device that paramedics and firemen use to quickly cut auto seatbelts free of accident victims. The fact that we use wind-on leaders with short lure leaders attached to them frees up both of the leader man’s hands so that he can slide the lure up with one hand, grab it and the leader and then cut the fish off close to the hook with his other hand if the fish is a wild one that we don't want to risk having injure itself if we try to take the hook out of him.
Circle hooks are cheap (the ones that I use, at least) and they are simply swaged onto the lure leader as far as rigging is concerned, so the loss of the hook is no big deal and is well worth it as far as making super-healthy releases is concerned.

WHAT ABOUT THE HOOKS THAT WE LEAVE IN THE FISH?
I don’t worry much about that, especially since I completely remove the barbs from my circle hooks. This is a habit that I got into when I discovered how hard circle hooks can be to remove from fish. Taking the barbs off makes that job a snap once you learn to twist and back the hook out the same way that it went in. I still take the barbs off on the lures that we are going to cut the leaders on, or leaders that we might have to do that on if a billfish hits them. I think it takes very little time for the fish to shake that barbless hook during his regular feeding, free-jumping, etc. activities. And remember, one of the beauties of circle hooks is that they almost always hook the fish in the corner of the mouth, where they do little or no serious damage.

Picture not shown

Here is the FatBoy we caught that marlin in the picture on. I have pulled the circle hook out of the lure so that you can see it and also note how simple the rigging job is. It takes mere seconds to slide a new sleeve and hook on and swage them. A lure with a hook that has been cut off can be back in the water in about ten seconds!

Picture not shown

Our little mono leader cutter can be swung quickly and safely at a leader; it picks it up in the slot with the blade in it and cuts the mono instantly. The fish is released unharmed by handling it to remove the hook with far more efficiency and safety than any other way that I have seen. This tool can also be a real life saver if anyone gets wrapped up in a leader with a fish on it, either in the water or in the cockpit. Every man on my crew carries one at all times.

Wire leaders are a cinch to kink and break in a flash, once you learn how. Practice (on land!) will help you develop that skill. If you don’t want to learn how to kink and break wire, a pair of quality cutters will get the job done for you, but not quite as fast or as well.

Picture not shown

OUR GRAND FINALE CIRCLE HOOK FISH & THE MOST TELLING!
This may well be one of the most important photographs in this or any magazine article or book ever if it encourages some others to start using circle hooks on billfish lures. It is from a book that I wrote over ten years ago – the first ever that spoke of circle hooks for lure fishing. I am proud of that first, but very disappointed that it, along with others, failed to convince all but a handful of fishermen to start using them in lures.

The fish in the picture is a juvenile Pacific yellowtail that managed to get hooked on what was for him, a giant circle hook in the chase bait of a SuperBar trolled by one of the earliest pioneers of circles in lures, Captain Bob Melville. It was caught during a time when vast schools of these little fellows were all over the place off Southern California. This was the time I wrote of earlier, when Bob had to goose his trolling speed up to ten knots to try to avoid this size and a bit bigger yellowtail that his parties had limited on.

Bob is a solid respecter of the fish that we count on for sport and our livings and at first he thought that he could avoid hooking and injuring the juveniles because his spreader bars were all rigged with big circle hooks. He didn’t think that the little ones had a prayer of getting hooked on the big circles. He was wrong!

In spite of the huge sized hooks (that hook above is even bigger than it looks. It is shot at an angle and is leaning away and behind the little fish), Bob kept hooking little ‘tail after little ‘tail on it. He finally had to adopt the ten knot approach to avoid both the little ones and the adults. (Yellowtail are strong, but not very fast.)

Picture not shown

That’s Bob Melville on the right with a bigger yellowtail, but still a small one that he was trying to avoid, this time by using bigger teasers and that huge hook. Check out the size of the hook that he’s taking out of the little fish! It looks like a J hook, but it isn’t. It is a giant, long shanked circle hook that we were experimenting with at the time. It didn’t work out.

WHAT’S THE POINT?
It is simple and clear; if little fish like these can get hooked over and over again on lures with hooks in them that are so large that it would seem impossible that just one of them could get impaled, let alone the majority that hit them, how can anyone doubt that this “new” kind of hook would consistently hook big fish like marlin, tuna, dorado, and of course, wahoo?!
If you remain a doubter after seeing that picture and reading about what happened to Bob, I am at one of my rare losses of words to describe you; kind ones, at least!

Attention, fishes, this is for you only…
I did my best for you on this. If they don’t listen and change, please do not blame me! I tried, but there are some fishermen out there who, uh, umm, lemme see here, how do I put this (those fishermen are listening, ya see?), they are, ahhh, well, kinda, sorta, ya know, a little, errr, stubborn? Yeah, that’s it (what I mean is that it will have to do), stubborn.

Let’s just leave it at that, okay?

WHERE WERE WE? OH YEAH, NO BALLYHOO TO BUY IN CABO

That's the end of the excerpt. As I said at the beginning, I'll get into the short and sweet details on the facts on rigging artificial lures to catch the heck out of marlin and everything else on them if there is enough interest.

[Bert Rodgers]

Thanks Fred, but the pics didn't work.

Bert

[Captain Fred Archer]

Bert,

Roger on the pictures. They don't cut and paste and then post, like text, so I don't know how to put them in the body of a post. And believe it or not, having written all of that once before and pulled the pictures out of my files and put them in the book, I didn't want to have to do that again. Rumor has it that I will be getting some software and instruction so that I can lay this sort of stuff out like a magazine article or book.

The skinny on how to rig and run C-hooks in lures will most likely be an excerpt from another, uh, book too. It will be a lot shorter than this and I'll have to attach photos to that one.

Sorry. I know that anything, long or short, is better with picts. I just dug up two of the picts from the book...half a loaf is better than none, I hope!

[birdhunter]

Thanks for the info Fred.

[Sea Draggin]

Originally Posted by Captain Fred Archer

Bert,

Rumor has it that I will be getting some software and instruction so that I can lay this sort of stuff out like a magazine article or book.

My Peace offering...and the only post I will make outside my threadsite, but here so you will see it.

You do not need special software.

1. Open/register for a photobucket account at www.photobucket.com

2. Upload your pics to your account. Hit the browse button, find the pics on your computer. Hit the 'add more' button. You should be able to upload 15 or 20 at a time.

3. Once you have all your pics uploaded it will ask you if you want to name them. You can if you like or click to go to your album.

4. Click under the pic in the 'IMG code' box. It will automatically copy and say copied.

5. Go back to your word document and past where you want the image to be. You will get something that looks like this [img]www.photobucket.jlasjfl[/img]

6. Just copy and past that into your post and bammo the pic will appear via automatic link.

7. You should be able to copy and past and splatter the web at will.

Give it a shot.
Jim

[HOLWACHAGOT]

Thanks for the write up Fred! Looking forward to the next installment.
Holwachagot

[merry marlin]

Have been sold on circles for a long time from billfish to bottom dwellers but what about GBFTS while pulling baits.
Would love to know what Fred says...

[SeaBiscuit]

Captain Fred,
I read the whole thing! I believe in circle hooks and want to learn how to better use them.

They missing key piece of info, in my opinion, is how to properly "space" the circle hook on the lure. I imagine that the "free sliding lure" approach works with most traditional marlin lures where the leader goes through the lure.

What about lure and ballyhoo combination, what does that look like? Still "free sliding"?

Last but not least: hard baits. Poppers, minnows and plugs. How do you rig those with circles? Hopefully we don't have to drill a hole though them!

On with the goods, please!
SeaBiscuit

[SeaMent]

Sea, after that read I am so confused now I forgot my question, are you trying to pull the lure with the circle hook behind it or in front of it ? I ask because of your question about the lure sliding on the leader.

[Matuka Fly]

Long liners on the west coast had to be convinced through a studdy to use circle hooks that proved to work better than J's. At a seminar I attended a comment was made about the way we put together the no excuse halibut rig. On tying the hook to the leader the line was to go through the eye on the point side around the shank and back out the eye following the main line through the crimp. There was a 20% increase in catch by rigging in this manor.