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Sunday, December 20, 2009

Circle Fish Hooks versus O'Shaugnessy and Octopus Fish Hooks

There is so much hype about the relative efficiency of different fish hooks that it is hard to know which is fish hook best for the fisherman, or the fishery!

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 the small portion of the extensive work reported on this page compares Octopus and O'Shaugnessy fish hook patterns (J shaped hooks) with Circle fish hooks.

It also tests whether tying or snelling the hook to the fishing line makes any difference to the catch rate and reports the observed incidence of gut hooking where fish have swallowed the hook. Only size 4/0 and 5/0 hooks were trialled.

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.

The graph above shows the circle hooks seriously out performed the popular J shaped hooks in all size classes of snapper.

The much higher catch of undersized fish on the circle hooks is of some concern



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



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