They say circle hooks are great for thru-jaw hook-ups. Can anyone comment on USING these for slow-trolling Kings with herring? If you've used them, Can you comment on oversized hooks...like a 4/0-5/0 tandem ? seems like a better set up to let the fish take it down, than setting the hooks???

I've never used circle hooks,but I don't think you actually set the hook. I think the theory is that when the fish turns away,the hook sets it's self. I've wondered myself if they'd work for Salmon?

I tried circle hooks for silvers this summer with limited success. I tried using the smaller hooks, only about 1 inch across with plug cut herring. 90% of the silvers I've seen in saltwater just come up and peck at the bait or mouth it for a second. This makes hooking them with a circle hook extremely difficult if they don't turn with the bait in their mouths. We often catch salmon on halibut gear while bringing it up or down, these are caught on 12/0 to 16/0 hooks, so i think the larger "bite" of these hooks might be key in hooking salmon on short strikes. I'll experiment with it more this summer, but so far I haven't been impressed with the smaller circle hooks for salmon.

david

From what I have heard Cali anglers use cicles all the time and they swear by them. I have never used them, so no first hand help here. I don't see why they wouldn't work.

MJ

i've heard that the Peoples Republic of Kalifornia fishing regs require the use of barbless circle hooks when mooching for salmon...maybe thats why they use them all the time, they have to...anyone on this board from Cali with an opinion on circles?? i don't know anyone up here who uses them or would want to.

Mojo, LMAO thats good The good old PRKalifornia. I am under the inpression that with circle hooks you let the fish take it down and set the hook itself. Most of the bites I get trolling in the salt involve the salmon slamming the bait.

I used to fish commercially in California about 19 years ago before coming to Washington State. I used a ton of circle hooks, but I never used them on salmon or steelhead. At that time there were no restrictions on the type or style of hook that you had to use on any fishery. But that was then, and I am sure that has all changed by now.

So here's what I know about circle hooks. They worked extremely well in the salt water on certain species of fish. We mainly used them on the various species of "rock cods". All of our hooks had barbs because we did not want our fish to come unbuttoned (ever). The hooks seemed to work best on the species that had wide faced mouths with larger lips (rock cod). They did not work very well for other species like Bonita, barracuda, yellow tail, albacore, or any of the other faster moving game fish species. They were extremely effective on all the cod species. One reason why they were so effective was that you really didn't have to "set" the hook to catch your fish. We used to leave our set lines out over night and pick them every morning, and we if had set them where their were lots of rock code, they would be loaded! It was not uncommon to have 30 hooks or more loaded with code on each pull.

We played around sport fishing with them too, but they just didn't really seem to work out that great. I do remember, that almost always, the fish that we did hook, were hooked in their lips. From the years that I did use them, I would not want to be restricted to using them on salmon or steelhead. Their mouths are entirely different then that that of cod, and I don't believe that they would work very well for them. I have never tried circle hooks yet on those species, so it's strictly just an opinion. The circle hooks seem to worked their best when you could allow the fish to "eat on them" for a long time. To me, that would not make them very partial for use in rivers for salmon or steelhead fishing.

Since I came from southern California, I never got the chance to use them on salmon or steelhead down south. I do know that there were certain species, that the circle hooks didn't work a damn on, but I can't tell you if they would work very well on salmon or steelhead, but my guess is that wouldn't work that well. To me it really wouldn't make any different if they were barbed or not, fish just don't come off of circle hooks very easy once they had been hooked.

It also took us a lot more time and handling to take the cod off our set lines then it did with the regular conventional style hooks. That's why we used them, because once that fish was on it stayed on!

So that my experience with circle hook in the salt. I hope that it will help answer some of your questions.


Cowlitzfisherman