Missing fish and missing the boat on circle hooks

[Squidnation]

"well we missed a white today on the circle"

"We had 3 up on the flats and short rigger and missed all 3, screw this circle hook stuff"

"it was about as frustrating a day on the billfish as I have experience in 10 years, missed 3 on the circles"

"Screw it, I ain't doing it no more. I can't catch fish on these circle hooks"

All quotes from guys I have spoken to in the past month. My first question to everyone of these guys have been - How often do you pull circle hooks? Oh - we only pull them during tournaments. HUH? Well I'm not Benjiman Eintsein but in the imortal words of Allen Iverson, "Were talkin about practice" Folks if you plan on tournament fishing and you haven't made the change to using circle hooks almost full time, you may as just write the check out to the guys that have.

There may be some learning curve frustration but get it out of the way now, not in two weeks at the WMO, or PC or MA500. Better yet get your tournament crew and go charter one of the boats that have made the committment to circles years ago, not weeks or days ago.

On another note - this just popped in my head as well. Some guys have told me they are not gonna pull circle hooks. They are just gonna troll big plugs at 8 knots and fish for blue marlin. Let me ask this question. How often do you pull big plugs at 8 knots for blue marlin. Oh, we're just gonna do it in the tournament. We usually bait on j's. hmmmmmm - some get iverson back on the phone

[frankypettolina]

Well stated- and to quote my friends "embrace the circle, it is your friend)

I have been catching tunas on circles way back fishing, dolphins on circles business as usual, have not raised a whitey yet this season, but I am not afraid.

Long live the 2004elf or VMC, or whatever you chose.

[frankypettolina]

quoting a different friend - how many times have you gone 2 for 10 on j hooks and blamed it on the J hook????

[Deep C]

As I have made the switch I have noticed first and foremost that if we bow em with a circle they stay stuck. Period end. A few dozen fish this year that got the rod bent all got got... It leads me to scratch my head when I hear "hooked up" calls at the end of a day then the "pulled off?"
I call what happens to us a whiff. Not a pull off. Some of it is angler or mate error but more often its my fault for not conveying what I have learned to them or getting them settled down to just slowly come tight...
Live and natural bait we have it down tight in just a few short months. Combo we slowly are comming around to with enough percentage to do well at bacardi...
Am I gonna drag bluemarlin plugs in the upcomming tournaments... You bet your sweet ass... Because YES I do that with good success outside of tournaments too. Does that mean I'm not gonna do the circle thing? WRONGO! I have a full set to fall in and replace the plastic in a blink. We will sniff out fish with the plastic and then make the switch when we get on them...

[clt_capt]

I believe the exact quote is "A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." (Joe Theisman)

I believe you are right - you do need to practice with circles - we had our tail handed to us over the weekend - and NO - I didn't practice before hand

[alex n]

Deep,
It makes perfect sense what you are saying, I've given a tremendous amount of thought on this subject, trying to adjust to the circle hook. Let's say for a moment that a marlin comes into the spread with J hook rigs out , he gets fed one by the mate and the mate let's him eat it for quite a while, when the mate decides to hook him the J hook has a lot of things to snag on the way up, if the fish feels something in his mouth he's going to open it up ,but with a J it doesn't matter as much because he'll still get the steel a lot of the time. But on the other hand a C hook works only when the mouth is closed ,and by nature the mouth is closed right after the bite, I am thinking the long dropback may be counter productive to marlin fishing with circles. This new method calls for a different fishing practice, I don't think you can fish the same old way anymore and just change the hook, the circle hooks fish entirely differently, and we as anglers much adjust to the change.

[Cowboy]

IRBA White Marlin Warm-Up

I know this coincides with the kids tournament but you can fish them both at the same time. Bill/Franky we will come down for a captains meeting if we can get enough people interested down at the OCMC, Let me know if you need any info.
Garry

[Sportsman]

practice, practice, practice....you are right sir. personally when we fun fish for blue marlin, we do troll all plugs at 7-1/2 to 9 knots. however, we rarely fun fish pulling circle hooks while chasing white marlin or sailfish. should we? YES. why haven't we? because it's too dang hard to give up the fun of catching them when you are in 'em. we definitely need to practice more circle hooking. we've caught 'em in tourneys on circles and down south on cirlces but for some reason i haven't thrown the box of good ol' 7/O j-hooks in the drink yet. maybe i'll do that tonight

[tags11]

there are some awesome ways of rigging circles and I think if you get good with them they might even b better than j hooks, it all depends on the setup and skill. I saw an awesome way to rig circles in a magazine a while back, i'll c if i can upload the pictures. practice with circles!

[Robja]

The first time I fished Circle hooks was 6 years ago in Guatemala. Our hook up rate was at least 80%. Once the sails came up in the spread they would pitch the bait back and reel in the teaser. When the fish switched over to the bait they would keep the reel in free spool with their thumb on the reel and count to 10 then flip the the lever and set the drag. the bait came back up out of the stomach and hooked into the corner of the jaw. In Costa Rica a couple of years ago i fished on an american boat. The captian was from Florida and the mate from Hawaii. Their hook up rate was less than 20%. The mate would free spool the bait but instead of letting te reel set the hook he would jerk the rod and the captain would gun to boat. Needless to say we got to see the bait fly out of the fish. After a confrontation with the mate where he jerked the rod out of my hand when i was freespooling a bait back to a blue(he jerked it out of the fish) he got pissed and said if we thought we could do a better job then have at it. For the rest of the day we hooked every fish we raised. Since I mostly king fish i don't use a lot of circles here but i keep several rigs made up for the times we see a sail and for the day we missed several cobia on J hook rigs I switched to a circle rig and finally got the fish to the boat without him spitting it out.