General Fishing Product Category Review: Are Circle Hooks for You?Written by Jeff Williams
Originally published in Procats Online MagazineCircle hooks have created a debate in last few years between anglers who fish rivers and those who fish lakes. When using circle hooks in rivers, I haven’t had much trouble fishing in good current. Although they performed well in current, fishing calm water areas such as big reservoirs I ply for giant blue cats, hook design gave me a bit of a problem with hook-up ratio in slack water. I began having hook-up problems when I fished areas with no current because bait wasn’t held straight on hook. Full circles were oftentimes double hooking back into chunk or live baits causing me to miss a lot of fish. What would I do when I am anchor fishing in a lake with a lot of slack in my lines due to boat sway from wind? I went back to my old standby treble and J-style hooks for quite awhile. Circle hooks are designed to hook fish without much rod movement by angler. Just leave it in rod holder and as line gets tight and rod bows down, pressure penetrates hook into corner of mouth of fish and fight is on. I felt this was a no brainer in current areas, but I tried to picture how these specialized hooks were going to work in lakes without current. I tried to imagine how a fish swims off bait in a lake as opposed to a river. Without current, fish could swim in any direction with bait. The fish might swim at your boat or they might swim crossways with your boat, making a tight line hook up with a circle hook very difficult. A year ago I learned from some other catfishermen that Daiichi came out with a modified circle hook that would work in all situations. If fish didn’t swim away from boat, angler could still set hook on fish! Last year I gave new circle hook called Circle Hook Lite a try. After I began to use hook, I found out in short order that a quick, had jerk wasn’t ticket to hooking blues manually with circles. As soon as we started using a long sweep of rod, we started hooking fish that weren’t being very cooperative. Fish would move to boat, away from boat, along side boat – every direction you could imagine and we were catching them just as good if not better once we learned good circle hook technique.
| | Monster Hunt: Ledge Lunker Blues Part IIWritten by Originally published in Procats Online Magazine
Settin’ It UpOnce Jeff has picked his area by marking right bottom contour near thermocline and right space between fish and bottom, he is ready to deploy drift socks. Williams will usually only use on drift sock or “sea anchor” to set his drift at right speed and path. Some anglers use two anchors out side of boat but Jeff prefers to drift with socks either out front or back to get a more controlled drift. If wind is moving at a fairly good clip, Jeff will fish from front so wind doesn’t push his boat too fast. If wind is fairly slow, he will fish from back so wind has more of a flat surface to push on, thus speeding up his drift. Jeff notes that he will catch more fish if he speeds up or slows down drift when he needs to cover more or less water. Also of note is that matching speed of boat to activity level of fish seems to work best on certain days. “You just have to fish and vary your drift speed till you start hookin’ up with fish. I like to start with a certain drift speed and then go faster or slower from there.” If Jeff is catching fish fairly consistently he will leave boat speed alone. If he goes very far without a hook-up and he is still marking fish on graph, he will slow down or speed up if he thinks it is necessary. On windless days, Jeff will use his bow-mounted trolling motor to create a drift. Fresh Bait Jeff says that one of most important parts of his fishing success is having fresh bait all day long. He motors to areas that hold shad such as bays, and cuts, and then moves slowly around till he locates schools of shad on his sonar unit. From front of boat, he throws a 16-foot diameter 1-inch mesh cast net and usually gets enough bait fairly quick. As soon as he nets first few gizzard shad he tosses them into a top-quality aerated oval bait tank made by Grayline. After he has caught enough big shad he drains water out of tank then refills it. “If I want freshest bait possible I have to get water changed. When shad get stressed they regurgitate and their stomach acids build up in tank’s water and burn their gills. By changing water, you remove all that and built-in tank filters will do rest.”
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