End of the line...Hooks.

[walrus]

Below is a brief summary of a research project on hooks, I thought it was worth sharing.

Paul's Fishing Kites has participated in large scale hook efficiency research over the last six years and has been involved in the setting of 60,000 hooks over several research projects to answer just that question.

The results make compelling reading as one hook type came out way ahead of the rest.

The sea trials used four 116 hook longlines which were set daily at sunrise.

The lines were left to fish for 1-2 hours.

Longlines were used to avoid any angler bias due to the different abilities and fishing styles of different fishers.

Each set of the longlines had circle hooks on half the traces (snoods). The other half were a combination of Octopus and O'Shaugnessy hooks.

Hook Type	Lip Hooked	Gut Hooked	TOTAL
Circle Hooks Tied	138	10	148
Circle Snelled Hooks	198	12	210
O’Shaugnessy & Octopus tied	69	5	74
O’Shaugnessy & Octopus Snelled	60	21	81

An equal number of each hook and knot type were fished and a vast difference in the catch rates were observed.

The snelled circle hook caught the most snapper by far (210 fish) followed by the tied circle hook (148 fish).

O'Shaugnessy & Octopus hooks whether tied or snelled caught about the same number of fish each (average 78). The snelled circle hook caught around three times as many snapper as the O'Shaugnessy & Octopus hooks.

Gut Hooking Rates
The circle hooks gut hooked the lowest proportion of the snapper catch. Circle snelled hooks gut hooked around 4% of the catch while tied circle hooks gut hooked 7% of the catch. However the circle snelled hooks caught around three times as many undersized fish, so will likely gut hook as many fish as O'Shaugnessy & Octopus hooks would for the same amount of fishing effort
The snelled O'Shaugnessy hooks caught around 10% more than the tied version but observed gut hooking of the catch increased from 7% to 26%

Best Hook for the Fisherman? Well one thing for sure is if you plan to catch and release, use circle hooks and you’ll be more successful.

Link for the full report:
http://www.fishingkites.co.nz/fish_hooks/fish-hooks-comparison.htm