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Circle Hooks Opened My ‘Blind Eyes’
By Captain Bouncer Smith
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“There’s a white on the long kite! He’s got the bait. Just start winding.
He’s on! Look at him jump! What a show!”
We were kite fishing off Miami Beach in 1999.
We had not caught a white marlin in three
seasons. Now we were hooked up solid with a
small but feisty acrobat. The little guy tore up the ocean for 15
minutes fighting for all he was worth.
When he came to the boat he was healthy, lit up and ready
to move on to his next adventure. I grabbed the 50-pound
mono leader and pulled the little white marlin toward the boat
in order to cut the leader near his mouth.
Suddenly everything went wrong. I felt a tearing sensation
through the leader. The 5/0 J hook at the end of my leader was
tearing the guts apart deep inside it. Suddenly blood poured
from its gills. I quickly cut the leader as it sank from sight,
leaving a solid trail of blood as a reminder of why I had been
converting to circle hooks for the past couple of weeks.
I had gone to the Miami Beach Rod and Reel Club
months before and listened to Captain Ron Hamlin and Tim
Choate rave about the success they were having with circle
hooks catching sailfish. They were catching as many or more
sailfish, but not seeing any blood trails or dead floating sailfish
in their wake.
I thought to myself, “Sure, with 50 shots at sailfish a
day, they could afford a low catch rate.” I need to catch every
sailfish that bites to have a booming charter business in Miami
Beach, Florida.
I continued to watch sailfish swim away after the release,
with a trail of blood behind them or their stomach hanging out the
side of their mouth. I told myself I was a devoted conservationist.
I knew I was doing my part to save a lot of sailfish for future
generations. I was a hero in my own mind. WRONG!
I was killing sailfish every day and bragging that the fish
were tough. They would survive that J hook stuck through their
stomach and into their heart or liver. That hook driven into the
base of their gills would not cause them to bleed out. They could
survive without that one eye. I was getting better at catching
sailfish every year; I released every one we caught. And, three or
four out of every 10 was dying for my effort.
That little white marlin opened my blind eyes. I could finally see.
J hooks are bad. J hooks are wrong. You and I do not need to kill
all those beautiful, valuable sailfish or any other game fish that
eats our bait.
When we were young boys or young men, we learned
how to fish. At first we could not get our kites to fly, our rigged
ballyhoo to swim or our cast nets to open. We learned how to do
all these things. That means we can learn to catch all our fish on
circle hooks.
You ask why? In North Carolina they caught 40 white
marlin and tagged them with satellite tracking tags. Twenty were
caught on circle hooks. Twenty were caught on J hooks. Every
fish caught on circle hooks lived. More than 30 percent of those
caught on J hooks died.
And, these fish were caught trolling where they tend to be
mouth hooked, not hooked at the back of their stomach like
they often are on live bait with long drop backs. I know from
watching them sink away that we were killing plenty of our
sailfish.
“Every fish caught on circle hooks lived. More than 30
percent of those caught on J hooks died.”
Today good, great and average guides and anglers are
catching plenty of sailfish, kingfish, snook, snapper and
everything else on circle hooks. The crew on the Git Lit with
Captain Ray Rosher caught 59 sailfish in the Silver Sailfish
Derby. All on circle hooks. We catch more snook and lose 5
to 10 percent of the rigs we used to lose by using circle hooks.
Commercial fishermen have been using circle hooks for a decade
because they catch more fish.
Catching fish on circle hooks requires just a couple changes
from your old methods:
1. Tie on a circle hook
with a gap large enough to fit
around the fish’s jaw. We used
to live by the Penn P170 or
Eagle Claw L 2004EL in the
7/0 size for all our sailfish and
bluewater gamefish as well
as tarpon and snook. We have
found that the Daiichi D84
3/0 will catch all these fish,
plus catch school dolphin and
smaller fish much better. Also
by being smaller, the Daiichi
gets more bites from cautious
kings and tunas.
2. Use a slightly lighter
drag for the first couple minutes
of the fight, when structure is
not an issue. This keeps from
pulling hooks from the mouth
of fish that are coming toward
the boat. This is not an issue
with snook and grouper that are
headed straight for the rocks
and away from the boat.
3. Do not jerk to set the
hook or break your rod against
the T-top.
4. Do not hide the hook
in the bait or sink the hook deep
in the bait. Bridle your big baits
with a slight space between the
hook and bait. For cagey fish
like tuna and snapper on chunk
bait, push the hook into the
belly cavity or flesh instead of
hooking the bait deep inside the
flesh and skin.
5. Admit to yourself that
there was one day that you
missed a fish on a J hook. Then
you will be able to survive the
one you miss one on a circle
hook. I once missed eight
sailfish during a single day of a
tournament using J hooks. That
poor little white marlin died
because we had missed two out
of six sailfish earlier that day
on circle hooks and I wanted
a perfect catch rate. Do you
think those two sailfish missed
while we caught four on a non
tournament day were worth
killing the last white marlin I
saw?
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