D3, I'm not sure why you're loosing fish, that's weird using the sickles. For Coyote's, we run a split ring, barrel swivel, then the 3/0 sickle, Coho killers, we take the ring off, put our own split ring on, barrel swivel, then a 2/0 sickle. Ace-Hi's and hootchies, we run 18 to 26" of leader, double 3/0 sickles with beads between the two hooks and the trailer hook being behind the hootchie itself or Ac-Hi and we RARELY loose a fish, like hardly ever. All are ran with 40 pound test leader. We switched to this last year and have excellent results on summer kings and blackmouth, like almost perfect results, I can hardly think of a fish we did loose. We do run a tight drag too, sometimes when too much line gets taken off for a peeler the line angle can pull a hook, or the fish turns with bad line angle and can pull a hook, but I'm sure you already know that. I just can't believe your loosing that many fish. Maybe it's just a streak of bad luck. I hope that changes soon for ya. The only fish we lost this year was one Vedder had on, it was a small blackmouth or humpy, I'm saying humpy, and he didn't take it too serious and pretty much tried to loose it, which he did by the boat, mostly cuz he didn't want to be know for catching skanks.