I have been polling a few high profile NW fishing personalities on the subject of the best way to rig one solitary single point hook on a Kwikfish. You might be wondering why I would handicap myself to one single point hook when the lure already comes stock with two trebles attached. Let's just say my favorite river has a mandatory single hook regulation. This is one popular way to rig 'em up, but I feel we still miss more fish than we should. Obviously, this chrome hen wasn't one of them.



So what do you guys think? Should the hook be rigged off the belly or the tail screw eye? How would you attach the hook? Split rings? Barrel swivel? Bead chain? Other?

Please include an explanation for the rationale behind your choices.

The variety of responses should be interesting.

It should be the belly eye, IMO. Fish target the head of their prey. Kind of like leading the target. Put the hook on the belly eye. Same rig, otherwise.

D.

Belly eye, split ring, four bead chain swivel,single siwash hook. Works for me. I believe this allows the hook to trail behind far enough to catch those fish that would otherwise be short strikng a fixed rig. It also doesn't hinder the swmming action.

Putting the hook on the tail might also affect the action of the lure. I'm putting single siwash hooks on all my spoons & spinners now too. This fall while fishing for silvers I hooked a fresh 20+# king on a spinner that went ballistic. Was of course no trebles allowed & I'm convinced I would have lost her if not for the single hook.

I have used both belly hook on a bead chain and rear hook with a small crane swivel. Lost too many fish on the belly hook set up but got almost every one on the rear hook set up.

rln

Seeing as you have tried both methods, let me ask this. Did you lose more fish with the belly-anchored bead chain setup during the strike (on and gone) or was it later during the fight?

With the swivel off the tail rigging, we miss quite a few fish on the strike, but generally lose very few during the fight once they've been hooked.

I just looked back on my logs and this is my experience with the tail hook rigging:
On any given trip, only 60-80% of strikes resulted in a solid hookup. In contrast, 90-100% of hookups were brought to the boat.

Doc,

I fish your favorite river as well. We run off the tail eye, split ring - barrel swivel - 6/0 siwash. Comparing it to back when they allowed the double trebles up there, I think our overall landing % is up, although the initial strike/stick ratio might be slightly lower. It just seems that once that 6/0 buries, they can't gain the leverage to unbutton due to the barrel swivel.

The one thing we changed to help bury the hook on the initial strike was to go to power pro 100lb (for up there). With mono, the fish's weight and strike are negated to a degree because of the stretch. With the power pro, if the hook point is anywhere near a lip, it will set very deep. This immediately became obvious when we were releasing fish. It took a couple guys working together to de-hook and release them in a timely and safe manner. The only issue we had was the 80-100 lb barrel swivels couldn't handle the stress of the inital strike with no stretch other than the 80lb mono shock leader. We broke a couple and had to move up to 200 lb swivels.

All in all, I'm sold on the efficacy of the single point. I would love to be able to run a bead chain siwash off the belly at the same time, just for fun. I think that combo would be very efficient (it is on the Columbia).

Doc:

I use "belly" method, 6 bead chains, and 4/0 or 5/0 hooks. That said it pisses me off that Lure Jensen doesn't provide Kwik Fish that can be ordered either with single or triple hooks.

Should be a "state regulation" that in order to sell KwikFish in Washington State, both single and triple hook type will be made available.

"Worse day sport fish, still better than the best day working"

I was missing most on the strike with the belly hook-up. Rods pumps down a few times, get a fish to boil on the surface, then gone. Tail hook-ups, rod would pump down 3-4 times , strike and then almost always landed them.

I run single siwash on most of my kwikies, whether I have to or not. While I haven't had to use just one hook, I seem to recall most of our fish being hooked with the belly hook rather than the tail hook.

I rig them by opening the screw eye, adding a 120 lb test swivel, and then closing the screw eye. Then I add a siwash, size 3/0 for a k14 to a 5/0 for a size 16.

I find that once the hook is in, they tend to stay hooked. I think we typically hook about 70% of the strikes, and we land about 80% of those fish that are hooked. I haven't been able to tell any difference between trebles and siwash in hooking efficiency, but have not kept detailed records. I have at least an emotional belief that the siwashes hold better during the fight, and they don't seem to get mangled like the trebles do.

If I were force to use one hook, I'd use a swivel or short bead chain, and rig the belly hook. I'd also downsize the size of the lure to something that was more likely to put the hook into the mouth of the fish, like a k13 or 14, rather than a 15 or 16.

I'm with SH on this one. I've always interpreted the rule as single point barbless hooks not one single hook. I have been using two at a time. Most fish being hooked with the belly hook on the beaded chain. Let me know if you think thats illegal.

Wooly Bully:

Double singles are okay in WA's so called "single hook only" salmon fisheries, but on the river Predator Dawg and I refer to, you are allowed but one single point hook, no exceptions.

If you extrapolate the percentages I posted above, you can see that on a bad day only half the strikes end up at the boat... on a good day it might be closer to 80%. I was just looking for a set-up for a solitary hook that might perform more consistently than that. You know, for those times when the river gives up one strike the whole day, it would be kinda nice to have odds better than 50:50.


To all the rest:

Thanks for all the good feedback. Maybe since so few guys in the PNW use one single hook on their Kwikfish, I should have started a poll asking,"which hook do you more often hook a salmon when using a Kwikfish, the belly-hook or the tail-hook?"

Personally, when I used to fish tandem hooks on these plugs, the vast majority were hooked in the mouth by the tail hook. During the fight, the belly hook would then frequently snag the fish across the top of the head, through a gill plate, or perhaps a body snag if it was an especially small fish. That is where most of the belly hookups connected. The scarcity of mouth hookups with the belly hook may well have been because I attached them with only split rings, no chains to let the hook "hang back".

The one day that I did get to fish one of our single barbless rivers only using Kwickfish I ran the 4 bead chain set up off of the belly hook on a K-15. The one thing I did do that was different this time was to add a piece of backer rod where the hook attaches to the bead chain (about 1/2 inch pushed on), I went 4 for 4 on takedowns and solid hookups, put one hatchery silver in the boat, let on upclipped silver go, lost one king due to the Power Pro burying itself in the spool (newly spooled up and first fish of the day) and lost one king when my Bud knocked it off at the net . I am going to continue to try this on springers this season, it seemed to work out. I think that there may be nothing more frustrating then to see your rod tip just bury only to come up empty.
Good luck and tight lines, Jeff

Jeffhead and rln

Would you mind posting a picture of your belly hook setups? It would be interesting to see why there is such a difference in your individual experiences on percentage of strikes solidly hooked ( or not). I think we could all learn something here.

I suspect basic statistics is at the root of many of our problems. The sample sizes we are drawing conclusions from do not support the strength of opinion that results.

SH

As Billy Joel once sang

"You may be right... I may be crazy"

Invalid sample sizes aside, it would still be cool to get pictures of the various belly hook riggings posted on this forum.

And I'd love to know how jeffhead does on those springers in 2004... you know, to help increase that sample size. What do you say jeffhead.... can you post an update on your Kwikfish stats next spring?

Sure will. I'll agree with SH, it was only one day and in the long run may not pan out. I was trying to get the hook up and parrelell to the river and not have it droop down and it did do that. The hook ups were solid, but the cracker factor was also!!
Good luck and tight lines, Jeff

I saved this photo from when RT used to post

Anyway I think you would rig it like this except swap the treble out with a single.



These are some Kwikis I was playing with last Chum season. Tests are still out as far as hook ups goes. However this set up is so nice when catching and releasing.