SKIRTED CIRCLE HOOKS

**Capt. Brian Daley** · 03-06-2007, 12:45 PM

Lure & circle combo the main drawback of trolling dead baits rigs and circle hooks is that they dont work well with skirts or small chugger heads. this can be a problem to thoses that that like to dress their dead ballyhoo with a bit of color
start by tying a haywire twist in a 15-inch piece of mono rigging wire,extending
the haywire about 2 inches and leaving a very small loop in the end. position the haywire and loop along the top of the ballyhoo's head (or under the chin) so that the loop and the haywires extend out in front of the bait use the long tag end of the wire to secure the wire to the head as you notmally would through the eyes up through the lip and so on passing over the haywire and loop when
necessary to help secure it to the bait to finish wrap the loose tag end down the bally's nose twisting it around the haywire loop to make sure it doesnt move
and its tight to the bally;s head

to run the ballyhoo naked simply insert the point of the circle hook through the small haywire loop and tighten with a twist or two since circle hooks need to pivot and swing to work properly and find their place in the corner of the jaw make sure the hook can move freely on the wire

if you want to run a skirt of mini super chugger in front of the bait simply slide
in on the haywire twist before adding the hook the extended haywire twist gives a lure or skirt pleanty od room to work and keeps the circle hook clear
of any obstructions

**Double D** · 03-06-2007, 01:07 PM

A picture is worth a thousand words, got any hoo left over from last year? I'll bring the cameras

**whitey** · 03-06-2007, 01:08 PM

In Costa Rica they were cutting the heads off of small boone squids and putting them over the ballyhoos heads and then attaching the circle hooks. They looked great in the water and did not affect the hookup ratio.

**Capt. Brian Daley** · 03-06-2007, 01:40 PM

Originally Posted by Double D

A picture is worth a thousand words, got any hoo left over from last year? I'll bring the cameras

No ballys left I'am in grease mode up to my elbos in reels and drags right now come
on over and get the hockey equip.

**TROPHY SPORTFISHING** · 03-06-2007, 03:02 PM

HEY WHITEY I HAVE SEEN THAT SETUP ALSO AND IT LOOKED GREAT NO AFFECT AT ALL ON THE BAIT OR THE BITE. GUESS BOONE IS GOING TO MAKE A KILLIN ON THEM SKIRTS NOW.

**Capt_John** · 03-06-2007, 03:08 PM

What about taking several mylar strips and rigging them through the ballyhoo eyes. That way when trolled,they bend back just like on a sea witch. I was looking at a pic of this earlier today. It was inthebite.com's magazine for this month. If anyone has it you can see the pics and instructions as well on pg.17. It looks like a great way to add color to a ballyhoo/circle hook combo.

**Capt_John** · 03-06-2007, 03:11 PM

I could take pics with my phone and send them to some of your phones. That's about it for now.

**Deep C** · 03-06-2007, 03:29 PM

Indeed works well for coloring the meat... What we need is to put our minds together and come up with a way to work with flavored plastic... I don't run combos for the color factor.
A white marlins eye is about the size if a golfball and the blues is around say the size of a tennis ball. The lateral line however in both species packs several more times worth of neural endings (nerves) to sense pressure or what we might call "vibrations or sound".
When I design a lure head for billfish the purpose is to create "sound" that those latteral line nerve endings can pick up on from a long way away. The issues we ran into with soft compounds are too dificult to go into detail here about but were bad enough to sink several manufcaturers right out of the game. So in turn we had to stay with a hard compound.
The design say of my teardrop incorporates a cup design with a back taper that when dragged right , imparts action to the ballyhoos tail. This head though is roughly an inch in diameter. The gap on a white marlin class circle hook is only roughly a half inch. As the lure is drawn through the fish's mouth the jaw is forced open to larger than that gap and sadly won't permit a hook up.
We tried unsuccessfully to rig with the hook forward. The issues were multi part. To stay IGFA legal we had to be right up tight to the head of the lure. With the hook there the gap didn't have enough room to sink. a second problem was that the turbulence from the perpendicular barb really disturbed the lure's performance to the point of making it just another piece of color instead of the jewel I had designed. A third problem creeps in with the nature of the white. For a circle to sink the fish must be turned away and the bait must be in the position to "catch" the jaw on exiting. In order to do that right the bait really needs to be dropped back. The white however is very slow to hang on to a piece of plastic long enough to drop back to him.
On top or under chin rigs of which there are a zillion variations were also unsuccessful for the jaw opening problems cited above...Currently I'm working on a rig that will get the hook back near the tail. This would allow the jaw to start closing, hopefully to a point smaller than the circles gap and give it a place to "catch".