Circle sword?

[Captain Michael Buffington]

Ive caught quite afew swords in the past. I was taught to use j hooks and all of my friends whos sword regularly use j's. My biggest so far was 287 and he was hooked in the side. My "bite" to land ratio is similar to tarpon...about 1 for 4. That sucks and I have been trying to come up with something better. Fred Archer suggested circles and sent a diagram that was more or less the same rig as mine with a circle instead of a j. This weekend we put it to the test. Two for two on "bites" to hookups with one cutting the 250 at the boat and one dead on the boat. I know this is just one trip and it doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things but I'm sold for the moment...How do you feel about circles for swords? More to come

Mike

[MountainM]

Love to see a bigger picture of the rig these ones I cant blow up

[Captain Michael Buffington]

Love to see a bigger picture of the rig these ones I cant blow up

those are in Venice at Steves place but next time I'm down. It's just 18' of 250 with a 16/0 mustad snelled on one end and a bead above the hook. Cut the other end sharp and run it through the head and out the mantle and push the bead up to the top of the mantle. Get your hook in the tentacles and wax thread the leader, bead, and squid together so it doesn't slide down and so it's harder for the fish to knock off. Then rubbetr band a green strobe 5' away on the 250. then crimp on a 3way swivel and put a dico light on one branch and a 24 oz. or bigger weight to the same. One at 400, one at 3, one at 2, one at one with a ballooon or bottle with a glow stick rubber banded on the line to stagger them and so you can see if one eats and comes at you or whatever.

Mike

[wide open]

good stuff capt. My good friend and capt down here in so. fla does not use Circle hooks and has tried them in the past. He actually uses an 11/0 mustad J-hook and offsets it himself. Quite dramatically. ill try to post a pic. he actually started using these bigger hooks, up to 12/0.

what size circle??

[Sea Draggin]

Mike,
As boy we always used live bait hooks and shad under balloons for stripers. When circle hooks came out we slowly switched over, because we had a higher hookup rate. The slow pull from the resistance of the balloon made the circles work perfect.

To me, a balloon bite is a balloon bite.

I wouldn't think twice about putting a 20/0 down.

[offshore]

Some good info here. We are going to give the swords a try out of OI in a few weeks. I have a few rigs made up for squid. Has anyone ever tried Dolphin Belly strips for deep dropping on swords....Thanks mark

[Capt. Mark]

We catch a lot of swords on circles ..my feeling is if there good enough for the longliners , they will work for me .. I prefer to hook my fish in the mouth, not foul hook them

[Captain Fred Archer]

Mike,

I'm delighted to hear that the circs did their thing for you and kudos for trying something new to you. I have been using the circs for many, many years and if anything, my hookup/landing ratio with the J's wasn't even as good as yours. Too many bites for too few fish and too many snagged fish that eventually pulled off - and the bigger they were, the more likely that was to happen. Dayem! To me, that last one alone was enough to make me start changing what I was doing.

That all changed for the way better when I switched over to the circs. And it got even better when I took Skippy Smith's advice and quit using the big squids that they chop up and chop off and get snagged while they're doing it and went to much smaller ones that they just swim up to and slurp down. Slurping is a mighty good thing when it comes to Elvis! Then things got better yet when we went to smallish (8-10") strips of the giant squids and sometimes just a single tentacle.

The circles are superior in so many ways - from no snagging, to no pulled hooks, to no bill hooking or wrapping, to clean, easy releases of pups and easy rigging the way that we do it - I would never even begin to think of going back to the old ways that we used to do it. That's me, of course, but I strongly encourage anybody who wants to up their catch rate and gain those other advantages to learn this game the way that we do it.

Heck, there's even a book that's all about this stuff!

Standing by for more fish from you, Mike. Congrats on the double! I hope you give the smaller baits and simple rigging I've talked about here...it works!

[Mark Ray]

Fred, I love that old photo!

[bigg09]

i think one major factor in which type of hook you use is when and where you are fishing. some areas have more current than others. also, there is a big difference between daytime and nightime fishing. from everyone that i have talked to, off-set j hooks seem to be the ticket and preference, but most that i hear of that disagree fish mostly at night. a lot of these people do not fish off-set j hooks too. we use anything from a 8/0 -14/0 j hook depending on bait size. we match the bait to the hook. I prefer an open gap j-hook, not the southern and tuna style. but then again we have done mostly daytime fishing the past three years. i agree with teh smaller squid, but love to experiment with different baits. dolphin belly sounds good. but i am a true believer that these fish are scavangers and will eat just about anything. I think that the hook type is less important (or use of j hook) at night because current is less of a factor due to drifting (exception might be deep baits that are traveling faster or slower below the surface. another thing to keep in mind is that what may work in one area (i.e south florida) may not work as well in lets say the mid atlantic north of hatteras out of the current. experimenting and finding what you are confident with I believe is the best option. this is improtant because everybody rigs a little different and this can also effect the efficiency of the hook up with a particular hook.