Steel Hooks vs Stainless Steel Hooks

[DropinBack]

From my experience... The fish can not tell and do not care if the skirt is stained with rust...

[Capt Lindsay]

Stainless steel is softer than carbon steel. We lost the largest Blue Marlin we ever had hooked up back in 2001 due to having a stainless hook in the hook bait on a rainbow spreader bar. That big girl was hooked right in the jaw, she crunched it while tail-walking across our spread, and the hook dropped out while we watched.

Someone posted asking whether you would use a stainless hook or a carbon steel hook that was rusty. We love rusty hooks. The shine is off the finish and while you have to be careful about staining the lure skirts, we prefer using a carbon steel hook that has a light rust coating for fishing.

However, the edges of our hooks have NO rust. That edge is properly sharpened and then coated with black Magic Marker. The Magic Marker does two things. It gives corrosion protection for the sharpened hook plus it tells you which ones have been sharpened when you grab in the hook box for another one.

Capt. Lindsay Fuller
June Bug Charters
Beach Haven, NJ
609-685-2839
http://www.Fish-JuneBug.com

[gottaflylee]

Capt Lindsay
is spot on with "stainless steel is softer than carbon steel" When we pull plastics, 90% of the time, it is in a tournament situation. I will not pull the same leaders twice in a tournament with out re-rigging them. Store the plastics by themselves with no leader or hooks.
As for infection due to hooks, I have not read where a hook hurts the fish where it is in its mouth. Fish eat some hard stuff as well as endure some strange miss-haps. Case in point, I have cleaned more than my share of Dolphin, it is not uncommon to find where a billfish has broken off it's bill in one and that has grown over so I did find it till I flayed it. The fish showed no signs of distress from the injury.

I'll keep the carbon steel hooks, thank you...

[Captain Fred Archer]

Interesting stuff, as just about all posts about hooks are. I suppose that I'm the only one in the neighborhood who has used circle hooks nearly exclusively in both lures and baits (high speed wahoo lures being the exception), what I have learned might be of interest to some.

Ignoring the superior hook up and landing results we got with them, here are a couple of other factors. First, I dull the points on all circle hooks and remove the barbs. This is because they are intended to wrap around jaw hinges and edges, not penetrate mouths, gills, throats, or gullets. This is especially kind on the fish and cuts way down on the number of bleeders and deeply penetrated ones. I am certain that this, in turn, results in far better released fish survival numbers than even using regular, unaltered circle hooks. Studies have proven that they are better than the J's in this regard and there is no doubt in my mind that the ones released off of dull, no-barb circle hooks have considerably higher survival numbers.

We use conventional plated steel non-offset longline hooks. That was all that we could get back in the early days, when sporties simply did not use them and there was no demand for "fancy, designer" ones. And once those started appearing, it seemed and seems to me that they were designed more to catch fishermen than fish. I have stuck with the same longline circles since the beginning. Hell, the longliners are the ones who came up with them and I figure they know what they're doing and we sure have had great success with them. Add the fact that they cost about the same as a tinned hook and far, far less than those springy stainless ones that work harden and break on you, and it's a no-brainer for me.

As far as releasing fish is concerned, billfish or otherwise, I am a stickler for releasing healthy fish that have a good chance of making it, otherwise, why release them in the first place? And while a fish of any kind can be a bitch to get a circle hook out of - because of that barb - they are a piece of cake to pop off using an ARC Release Stick without it. Using circles modified this way, wind-on leaders, and that stick eliminated just about all boatside wrassling with and billing of fish and having them beat their brains out on the side of the boat and otherwise damage themselves while the mate struggles to control them and get the hook or hooks out. (That, in fact, is better for both the fish and the mate.)

It doesn't have anything to do with hooks, but we also never allowed any of those "marlin or sails on the gunnels or in the 'pit shots" that one sees so many of and that simply cannot be good for the fish. I believe that if everyone gave up that sort of thing, there'd be a lot more healthy marlin releases than there are now. On our boat if someone wanted a billfish picture, they took it of the fish in the water, period.

I don't worry much about the hook hurting the very rare fish that we bust off and the few that we cut off because they are so wild and crazy. Once the pressure is off of that hook, I'm sure that sooner or later it falls out on its own and twice we had marlin we'd cut off jump at the boat jump and we actually saw the c-hook fly out of their mouths - one right into the 'pit!

I agree with some other posters as far as not sweating some rust on my lure skirts. Of course, I'm the guy who skirts his upside down in the first place and if you read my books, you'll see that I half tongue-cheek say "the more beat up a lure gets, the better it works. Heck, I take those shiny, pretty new ones and drag 'em behind my truck on the way down to the marina before I fish with them!" Plus, for whatever reason, we have had far less rust and corrosion issues with the circle hooks than we have with J's.

The picture below shows the closest that we come to handling fish hard. We did it with as much care as possible and I believe that most of the few fish that we handled this way survived. (We did it with a bigger tuna from our first bite of the day that we were going to release after quickly shoving a washdown hose down their stomachs so that we could absolutely know what "hatch to match" that day.) Limits in The Baja dictated that legal operations who knew what they were doing had to release a lot of tunas and we often limited with our first multiple. All other fish were released in the water.

Our final way of avoiding too many tunas, dorados and skipjacks and catching only billfish and any really big tunas or dorados that showed up was by using the bar teasers that I have shown here before, raising the little stuff, driving them nuts because they can't get ahold of a bait and can't do what they usually do, flush some singles out of the bait pod, and then bait the bills when they showed. It works great and we fished that way a great deal of the time and because we had some good pitchers and some Little Leaguers, we developed an "automatic pitching" trick that worked like a charm. Our pitch baits had circle hooks on them.

Just recently we had a meeting and decided that in the very near future we are going to offer all of our lures with circle hooks as the standard. Naturally, any other style of hook can be rigged on a Mustad stainless or duratin, or with the Hays Stainless hooks that are popular with many. To our knowledge, we will be the first lure company to offer circle hooks as standard rigging, but what the heck, they are all that all of us use, so we figure why not? Or as my pal and partner, David Jones, who owns Fishermens Fleet down in The Baja said, "Hey, we talk the talk...Let's walk the walk."

And so, we're walkin'. You'll see the changes in the catalog shortly.

Over.

Website www.fredarchersworldoffishing.com

PLEASE BEWARE OF COPYCATS AND DON'T CONFUSE ANY OTHER WEBSITES AND CATALOGS WITH OURS.

[canyongear]

Well I guess it's off to acquire some new Mustad Z's and Duratins and do a saltwater test..not that it really matters, but I curious..and a few photo's won't hurt either after 30 days in the brine.

I was actually thinking more on price since stainless does drive up the rigging cost..so no matter..you want it..you got it.

Appears the new Z's may have good value, if they are better in the corrosion resistance department than the Duratin's. Not quite sure $1.80 per hook worth tho.

[aloop]

But if you were going to get a tongue/lip piercing would you rather it be stainless steel or non-stainless (ie rusty) ?????

They use sterling silver for those!

[canyongear]

If you throw one of these in each lure pouch/pocket you will notice a huge diffrence with rusting..so much so the will come with all of our lure bags..

2 year protection ..They also make a non skid drawer liner..nice

However, they don't work for modified circle hooks.. or long drawn out informative dissertations that usually lead to an ad.

just kiddin Fred..

[Roddy Hays]

I wrote this some time ago in 2000 for a British publication. It still makes sense to me, so much so that I made some hooks myself. Leaving aside Fred's arguments about circle hooks, I still believe that stainless hooks make sense in a trolling lure.

So, which one of these arguments is my hot potato ? Ask anyone who has fished with me and they already know the answer - for me it’s a campaign bordering on the evangelical - it’s the battle of the hooks. Traditionalists with their cadium, duratin or zinc anodised ‘strong’ 7731’s against the rather smaller band of hedonists who use shiny stainless-steel 7732’s - which are ‘brittle’. I subdivide this into those that care about fishing versus those that couldn’t give a damn. I care for my fish, particularly the big girls I like to catch, and my main aim is to release them to fight another day - to that end, I will use stainless-steel hooks. Confused ? Read on.

Traditional opinion has it that stainless-steel does not rust, and that everything else does, and therefore if you leave a hook in a fish then it should be something that rusts out. Traditional opinion also states that stainless hooks are weak and break easily compared to galvanised ones. Bullshit to both these arguments, and I have never yet lost my case. We’ll take them one at a time.

First up - the strength issue. I don’t have my logs with me, so I can’t give you an exact figure, but I think I’ve now been responsible for around 600 blue marlin, the vast majority of which have weighed over 500 lbs. I can add to that another 1200 or so that I’ve seen and maybe briefly played with via knock-downs or pulling drag a little etc. I can count on one hand the number of fish I have lost due to the use of stainless-hooks. I have NEVER broken a stainless hook. I know of a point broken on another boat on the strike. I have seen some of the best wire-men in the world control some of the largest fish in the world without breaking a stainless hook. Yes, I have seen a couple of hooks bend open ever so slightly during the fight (but not lose the fish), and yes, I have also seen a bunch of them bend open on the wire (they do not bend open as easily as a 7731, though). Even a little wimp like me can take a couple of wraps on 600lb leader and throw open an 11/0 of either metallic denomination. But break ? Never. To anyone who says they don’t use stainless hooks because they break I simply ask why they bother using fishing rods or fishing line - they break too. I once met a really well-known captain who has caught thousands of billfish who bluntly told me he didn’t use stainless hooks because they broke. I asked him how many stainless hooks he had broken in his lifetime - he told me three. Three too many, he said. I asked him then how many rods he had broken. He looked at me with a grin and told me ‘Loads.’ Is there something macho about breaking a rod and leaving a fish swimming around with several hundred yards of line, a 30’ leader, a lure and two hooks in it ?

Last year I watched as a record-seeking boat touting triple-strength Mustaad 7731’s came to the dock three times in one week with their hooks splayed COMPLETELY open after a tussle on the wire. I could go on for a long time on this issue, but I’ll leave you with just one example of just how strong stainless can be. In 1994 we hooked a ‘nice’ fish for Jess Miller up on the windy side of Madeira. Close to shore and alongside the boat quite quickly, the fish appeared to be well over 1000 lbs. My wire-man at the time couldn’t quite handle the fish by himself in that rough water and so after a couple of efforts on the leader, I told him to grab one of the safety-lines, clip the swivel to the snap and tie it off on a cleat. Mission accomplished, I started walking the marlin around the headland into the lee of the land with the fish 29’ below us (I wasn’t using wind-ons in those days). It took us about 20 minutes, and below the boat we could see the fish on its side - one of those impossibly difficult ones. In the calm water it took three of us to get that fish to the boat on the wire and release it. I never saw the fish as I was pinned on the deck under the gunwale holding on when it finally appeared beside the boat and the hooks eventually pulled out. Miller, who has caught several granders, said it was the largest fish he had ever seen in Madeira, so we’ll take it as granted that it was a big fish. The point of it all, of course, is that the hook didn’t fail. That is how strong stainless can be. Anyone who still remains unconvinced and likes to kill fish should go buy a pack of French-made Marinex hooks - stainless through and through and you can tow a truck with them.

So, moving along, we come to the ‘rusting out’ section of the debate which is the part of the argument that always gets me into trouble. We’ll start with another story here. It’s 1995, and a rich and well-known American heart surgeon is on board Margarita. During the course of the day he comes up to the bridge and starts the battle of the hooks according to the rules of his boat back in the US. Well, I couldn't convince him with the strength argument, nor the financial one (stainless hooks last for years and actually save money) since he was richer than Creosus, so I changed tack and went for the health issue since I knew he was an ardent conservationist. I simply asked him why he didn’t use galvanised or cadium/zinc plated instruments during surgery. There was long pause, and he looked at me. ‘Explain.’ he asked, so I did. I simply asked him which of two patients would he expect to survive longer - one with a stainless scalpel left inside their chest after surgery, or one with a galvanised one in there. Without any hesitation he went for the stainless. I explained my reasoning further and the last I heard his boat is using 7732 stainless hooks.

Here’s what I said. Imagine a fish with a galvanised hook in its mouth, swimming along, the hook dissolving slowly, and all that matter leaching slowly into the fish’s mouth and gills as it does so. What on earth does that do to either the fish’s respiratory or digestive system ? From experience I know what longline hooks do to a fish. These fish are normally emaciated, bleeding from several sores in the area of the hook, and the hook is normally encysted into the flesh, unable to drop out and slowly rusting away. One fish with a circle-hook we caught in Madeira was obviously so far spent all it could catch any more were deepwater stingrays as it had three barbs (at first I thought they were small bills from white marlin and spearfish) protruding from its head.

I personally believe that any hook left in a fish that is not stainless is more likely to end up killing it than saving it by the act of leaving it “un-traumatised” by cutting the leader. Before that hook drops out or rusts away most of it is going to end up as liquid inside the fish’s mouth or stomach, or pass through its gills. If you think about it, why do we humans rush to check our tetanus cards when we encounter a rusty wound ? If you were in the dentist’s chair and he leaned over and said he was going to leave a needle in your mouth, which are you going to plump for ? The heavy-metal plated one, or the clean stainless ?

And as for the hook staying in there for ever ? Well, we all know from bitter experience just how easily billfish spit the hook most of the time, so I am assuming that a fair number of hooks come out of a fish’s mouth within a day or so. Those that remain I believe that a few come out and go the other way into the fish’s stomach. I feel they do little damage there that a fish cannot cope with - how many children surprise x-ray technicians with an assortment of ironmongery, for example ? And as for those fish that cannot shake the hook ? Well, I think a high majority of them manage to cope and evolve ways to live with it. If fish can live with a nasty old long-line hook in their mouths, then they can live with a nice shiny one too. Ever wonder how those fish without bills and fins, or those with hideous wounds survive ? They learn.

So, need further convincing ? The University of Georgia ran a series of tests on a tank full of striped bass back in the 1980’s. They used a combination of hooks and left a bunch of fish swimming around with various bits of metal inside them. The ones that lived (ie: did not die) were those with stainless hooks, even the deep-hooked ones, which was part of the program. Again, I know of three fish from Madeira caught on stainless hooks which have been re-captured. That might not seem a lot, but run that figure past the amount of fish caught and re-captured from St. Thomas (where the practice of cutting leaders is normal) and you can see a slight discrepancy.

Any other advantages ? Yessir - your hook-rate will soar. Stainless hooks keep their edge far longer than others. Their tips do not roll over against a bill or hard mouth nearly as easily as a galvanised hook. You will find yourself with some hook-ups you will not believe, even with a light drag. They do not rust, and so when you’re baiting up for the day, you don’t have to worry so much about cuts you may get (!) and your boat and tackle-drawer stay a whole lot cleaner. One hook may last for a whole season, or maybe two. Your hook-rigs do not rust so fast you’re throwing away hooks left right and centre (or alternatively, staying up past midnight with some wet&dry and a can of WD40 - perish the thought) AND you do not encounter so much electrolysis on the cable-rigs commonly used.

Anything else ? Imagine yourself in some cherished fishing-hole near the Equator, standing in a cockpit full of chaos (don’t we wish !). Suddenly, with a painful wrench, you find yourself with a legful of rusty, fish-encrusted 12/0. Chances are the fishing part of your holiday is over, you face a trip to a clinic down a jungle track (did you pack your sterile needle pack ?), and there’s a good chance you’re going to get some infection of some sort involving blood-poisoning and staphylococcus. Now, I’m not saying that a stainless hook in there would have let you go fishing the next day, but by heaven you might have ridden on the boat without too much trouble though.

Any disadvantages ? Sure. They break. They’re expensive. They kill fish.

Don’t they ?"

Since then I can only say that the [deleted] hooks we make have been a revelation to many people, and of the several thousand [deleted] hooks we have sold over the past four years I know of only two failures. One a 12/0, opened on the leader by a giant bluefin in NZ, and another with a snapped point on a stripey in the same country. The former opened because the crew could not lift the fish by hand and wrapped it round a cleat. In comparison we have had granders caught on them (including an 1176 caught on a 9/0 with 60lbs of drag), giant threshers released on them, hundreds of giant blues in Hawaii, the Azores, the Cape Verdes and Madeira brought to boatside on them, and several dozen giant blacks caught off the GBR with them. Nary a problem.

Ultimately the choice is yours, but I will forever use stainless in those situations where I think the fish may be left with a hook in it's mouth. Ask Fred, he and others have used [deleted] hooks for a while now for his tackle-busting threshers and he's had no worries whatsoever.

This isn't an advert for [deleted] hooks - it's an argument for using stainless. Which is why Bart Miller sells them too !

[Anders]

good info here, thanks guys

[Captain Fred Archer]

Good, long, informative, intelligent post as usual, Roddy. A good, responsible, detailed reply. Classy as usual. Even though I'm a C-hookaholic, I can surely attest to the strength of those Hays Stainless Hooks of yours. As you know, we tried like the devil to open one on several big thresher sharks that we bullied on the leader (back when I was still a big, bad azzed bully, too) and couldn't come close to hurting them. And one of our authors, Captain Tim Markham, took (at last count) dozens of those brutes on the same 12/0, the vast majority of which were released and we go to war on the tail hooked ones that we let go in order to get them unhooked and free the very first time we get ahold of the five hundred pound leaders.

I don't think that you mentioned that their round, hypodermic style points are indeed sharp as hell and that they don't roll, period! It is the only hook that I will fish as is, right out of the box.

I still love my C-hooks for various reasons (sounds like there might be one or two people here who have had a great deal of experience with circle hooks in lures too...hmm), but when it comes to the J's, yours are the kings. And I remind you that we offer your hooks to those who want them.

Thanks again for a great post. We are very lucky to have you jumping in here from time to time.