Quote:
Originally Posted by numbskull
Lose the barbs, Mike. I mean it, seriously. You don't need them, particularly on large fish. You'll drop a few fish when they switch directions in close, but it beats hell out of having to go to an ER from where you sometimes fish. Also, if you are out on a rock, try a small lip gaff. Makes life much simpler. Nice plug, by the way, very nice.
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I actually have a sinister plan in mind next to crushing the barbs.
An old comrade of mine used to hand line commercially for striped bass way back off the Nantucket and Monomoy rips. One time he showed me a bunch of his plugs rigged up with 5/0 and 6/0 siwash hooks...he said the trebles would straighten out under the strain of the 600# hand line, so he put big singles on and the problem was solved. You'll miss a few more fish I'm sure, but a real large fish would have no problem taking everything down and unhooking would be much easier and safer. Landing a big fish in current would be much more likely too as you can apply much more pressure to the siwash hooks. You would likely cull out the smaller fish as they wouldn't be hooked as easily and damaged, which brings up a problem:
Despite the fun I had recently I put back a lot of real small fish that were severely damaged due to the treble hooks. There were punctured eyes, gills, and open gashes on many of them after the battle which I regret...there is a lot to be said for single hook fishing(eels, jigs, shads, etc.) in terms of releasing fish in good shape as one single penetration in the mouth area has to be better than mulitple site punctures inflicted by trebles...just a thought.
Gonna re-rig the big swimmers this week with singles and see what happens.
Considering they wouldn't take an eel one night, it was actually easier with plugs...unhooking a thrashing fish while you're in a precarious position ain't easy though...in that situation I'd prefer an eel or single hook offering as you need not worry about the trebles. I did get one about 35# on an eel the first night though...everything else came on wood.
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