A while back Todd mentioned that I should try out some of the "sickle" style hooks while fishing for salmon in the salt. I saw how well they worked on a river coho trip with him last fall and was curious about their use on a downrigger. I used them exclusively this the first two days out of NB and found a couple of things:

They hold fish extremely well. I can only think of one release off my rigger where the fish was gone. That is a very high hook up rate. If I had to guess, I'd say at least one in four usually are gone, maybe higher.. I may have lost one salmon where the hook slipped in both days fishing. Again, my normal rate would be significantly higher. I used the sickle siwash on my spoons, and the octo's on the hootchies. Caught most fish on the hootchies. For the sake of "testing" my friend was only using regular gami octos. He lost way more fish both off the release and during the fight. This is in no way conclusive as he is somewhat a little rough around the edges to put it nicely.

The only downside I can see for saltwater applications are, first off, they are very difficult to unbutton. I found the standard dowel type hook releaser difficult to use with these hooks. You cant get the right leverage very easy because of the "hard corners" on the sickle section of the hook. Secondly, the flat section between the corners often pins flush to the fish's jaw making it tough to get hold of with pliers. I found myself using my fingers mainly. The octos were tougher to unhook than the siwash. With the siwash the spoon gave me something to hold while trying to unhook them.

So in summary, so far, great fish holding properties, almost too good for selective fisheries.

I am going to continue to use them and see if I can trouble shoot the dehooker issue. One thing I may try is to use a single siwash off a barrel swivel on my hootchies when coho are thick. I think the siwash will give me a better surface for the pliers to grab over the octos. I'm also wondering if a dehooker that has slight corners lke the sickle hook instead of the standard rounded ones would work better with these hooks. If nothing else, it gives me a reason to fish and tinker with gear!