Tying verses snelling fish hooks

[tightlines]

Ever wondered if the way you attach your fish hook makes a difference to your catch. The results below show it can make a huge difference and are from a report posted at the attached link

QUOTE
Commercial fishers in NZ use a type of circle hook and snell their hooks to the fishing line.

Most recreational fishers tie a knot to the eye of the hook as shown in the diagram.

As one would expect, the commercial fishers had it right. Snelling through the back of the hook eye as shown improved the observed catch rate on circle hooks by a staggering 30% while gut hooking of the catch was about the same.

The snelled O'Shaugnessy hooks caught around 10% more than the tied but observed gut hooking of the catch increased from 7% to 26%

[image]http://www.fishing.sh/htmfiles/hookreports/images/snelltie.jpg[/image]

The report also compares catches by hook types
[image]http://www.fishing.sh/htmfiles/hookreports/images/graph.gif[/image]
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 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.

The graph 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.


[image]http://www.fishing.sh/htmfiles/hookreports/images/jandh.jpg[/image]
The above comparisons were done in New Zealand. If anyone tries this elswhere please let me know how you get on

I couldn't work out how to get the catch rate and gut hook tables but there is more info including how to do the snell knot used at the following link

http://www.fishing.sh/htmfiles/hookrepor...lling.html
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[JapanRon]

Hi there tightlines,

Having fished in Japan for 30 years, I can say almost all (90%+)hooks for 90%+ of fishes targeted were designed for snell tying until the last 7 or 8 years. This has only changed with the boom in western style fishing methods for a growing number of species. (one exception is the offshore or near-shore big game fishes)

Snell tied hooks be they J or circle have what I think is one detractor. You may disagree. When removing the hook from a fish, not withstanding how deep the fish took the hook, there is a greater chance of nicking, scratching, cutting, damaging some area of the line, especially that area on the actual shank of the hook. An eye kind of gives you a protection of know/line damage somewhat like the guard on a sword.

I always use a snell tie when putting a trailer or stinger on a bait or main fly. I would think that live bait action is not as good with the snell as with a hook tied with a loop knot, etc.

I get the feeling the commercials use big time heavy gear that doesn't fail so they're set to catch a 2 or 20 pounder they're there to catch and make a living. Therefore, their concerns are quite different that recreational anglers who often catch and release and fish light tackle/line to boot!

I have no squawk against the commercials and the fact is I now use circle hooks on almost all my fishing (including #10 finesse circle hooks for shrimp flies).

Snell vs Eye hook style circles..... interesting info! Thank you.

JapanRon
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[Fishslayer]

[cool]I've been a fan of the snell since I was about 15. I still use it on Octopus type hooks on lighter tackle. Indeed, I also used to actually bend the eyes on my heavy live bait hooks & use the snell, then quit bending the eyes altogether, snelling as in the illustration.



But, I did some pull tests and a large percentage of breaks occurred at the point where the line bends around the hook eye. For that reason I only use it now on Octopus type hooks.

No real need to worry about damaging the snell removing hooks. The knot is VERY resistant to biting/abrasion. The weak link is the VERY last wind on the hook. But HEY! You DO retie after every fish anyway, right? []

I've been using circles for two seasons now. They usually hook in the jaw as advertised, so no chewoffs, but I also have had a larger number of pullouts with the circles. Choose yer poison! [cool]



Fishslayer
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