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No More Trebles


Leon Roskilly

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the only times ive ever heard of what you describe happening is in the hands of inexperienced or incompetent anglers, ive seen some fisherman that think you unhook a fish by grabbing your hook in your forceps & yanking it out

 

Sounds like unhooking, which you generally do on the bank...yes?

 

Like i say ive never seen or heard of this happening with a fish thats just been banked.

 

Again, sounds like unhooking on the bank to me, only this time he's never seen or heard of it

 

Either way, it isn't clear what he means.

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"I envy not him that eats better meat than I do, nor him that is richer, or that wears better clothes than I do. I envy nobody but him, and him only, that catches more fish than I do"

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Thanks Budgie thats exactly what i meant :)

 

Just to clarify Andy i presumed in your post you were talking about unhooking possibly because

1. In your words in a later post. By the way, I didn't say anywhere that the damage was done on the bank, as a result of unhooking. The damage was done before the fish was banked.

2. I have seen & heard of fish damage as a result of bad unhooking.

 

Also ive still never seen or heard of a fish being landed with an already badly busted up jaw as you described. I hope now you can see that what i have seen & heard of & what i havent seen & heard off are 2 completely different things .

 

 

Tight lines

The more i practice the luckier i get :)

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Okiedoke. Fair play and I appreciate you not losing the rag. I read your post umpteen times and I wasn't exactly sure what was meant. I just replied to your post as I understood it.

 

(PS: It was a bit of a rabble though....go on. Admit it....lol)

 

.....Regards....Andy..... ;)

¤«Thʤ«PÔâ©H¤MëíTë®»¤

 

Click HERE for in-fighting, scrapping, name-calling, objectional and often explicit behaviour and cakes. Mind your tin-hat

 

Click HERE for Tench Fishing World forums

 

Playboy.jpg

 

LandaPikkoSig.jpg

 

"I envy not him that eats better meat than I do, nor him that is richer, or that wears better clothes than I do. I envy nobody but him, and him only, that catches more fish than I do"

...Izaac Walton...

 

"It looked a really nice swim betwixt weedbed and bank"

...Vagabond...

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been busy with the cod lately :)

 

But I managed to get out to a largish lake today, fishing float-fished sprats and twitching baits in the margins.

 

Had five takes and 'banked' five jacks, ranging in size from 2lb to 8.5lb

 

Apart from the larger fish, which I wanted to weigh, all fish were unhooked in the water, by simply rolling the hook out using my fingers (the other unhooked itself in the landing net).

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Interesting discussion! Here in Minnesota, state fishing laws prohibit the use of treble hooks except on artificial lures (like Rappalas, spoons, etc.) so we have to use single hooks when using live bait (or dead bait for that matter). Circle hooks, snells and J-hooks are most commonly used.

 

While considered a respectable game fish, northern pike are also fairly common in Minnesota waters, and therefore it is not generally frowned on to harvest smaller pike (nicknamed "hammerhandles" or "snakes") for table. During winter ice-fishing can be done with two lines, and alternatively, winter spearfishing for pike (and "under-utilized species") is permissible; a very large hole is cut into the ice and a "decoy" is jigged with one hand to draw in a pike and the spearfisher essentially harpoons it with the other hand. Of course with spearfishing, the point is to catch dinner, not to catch and release. Muskellunge, the other Esox species in Minnesota, are larger and much more rare so the winter spearing of muskies is not permitted.

 

Personally, when practicing catch and release on pikes and muskies, and when using artificial lures with trebles, I bend down the barbs, and if the lure has 3 sets of trebles, I pull out the middle set, but I find the johnson silver minnow (a weedless spoon with only one hook) to be easy to use or a single-hooked spinnerbait (an artificial). For hook removal I use a needle-nose pliers or a forceps and I also bring along a set of heavy gauge wire cutters that can snip through hooks if necessary. I can always buy another hook or lure. When using live bait, I tend to use circle hooks, though I generally don't use live bait for pike and muskies.

 

I have yet to go ice-fishing this year - I hope to get to it before it becomes unsafe and I'd like to get a whitefish and/or a burbot added to my life-list. Luckily, a nice "Alberta Clipper" just flew in down from Canada so we're looking at about -12 C this weekend.

 

Dave

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Circles were originally developed for longlining,

 

Circle hooks pre date metalworking! The oldest examples are made of horn, bone and stone, True they are mostly used in longlining but not developed for it. Stone age man did the development work.

 

That said I'll be trying this out. Sounds much better than trebles.

 

Cheers,

OT

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious"

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Now here's a story that will take some swallowing.

 

But I have a witness!

 

Arf collected me this morning as I volunteered to accompany him on his first ever pike session.

 

We were fishing on the Medway at East Farleigh, and Arf had already had a jack around 6lb or so on a spinner.

 

Following a move to another swim, I was fishing a sprat close in beneath a pike bung, whe the bung started to show signs of life.

 

Gently lifting the rod, I felt the pike move, then take off, well-hooked.

 

Bringing it to the bank, I could see the circle hook neatly in the corner of the mouth, and so decided to unhook it in the water.

 

However, as I lifted it's head, there was a length or trace around the back of the head which I started to move out of the way, and only then realised that it wasn't part of my trace.

 

So I decided to net it and bring it ashore.

 

On the unhooking mat, my circle hook was easily rolled out with my fingers.

 

Then I had a look down its throat.

 

The other trace disappeared down deep, but I caught a glimpse of the tail of the bait before the pike thrashed and I lost my grip.

 

I got the fish back under control, opened its mouth again, now ready to deal with a deep-hooking, but there was no sign of the trace.

 

Oh! It's completely swallowed it :(

 

I asked Arf to pass me the longer forceps, and tried gently poking down beyond where I could otherwise see.

 

Still no sign of the trace.

 

Dejectedly I decided that I now had no choice other than to return the fish, which swam away strongly.

 

As I turned back to tidy the unhooking area, Arf picked up an unattached baited trace.

 

The fish had disgorged it by itself :)

 

Hang on, it's a circle hook baited with a sprat!

 

Checked my rig, but that was still attached.

 

Then it dawned on me.

 

Before moving swims, I'd been fishing sink and draw and become firmly snagged on the bottom, giving me no choice but to pull for a break.

 

The pike must have picked up the baited trace, swallowed it, and moved down river to pick up the scent of my bait.

 

So it was my own lost trace that I'd seen disappearing down it's throat, and the tail of the abandoned sprat.

 

As the unhooked pike had thrashed, it had successfully disgorged both the bait and the circle hook without my assistance.

 

Now if that had been a rig with a set of trebles that I'd lost, the story would have been something quite different.

 

Oh! and I'm pleased with the 2/0s that I've changed down to from 6/0s, they seem to do the job well.

Edited by Leon Roskilly

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We were so confused at first, until we worked out what had happened!

 

That single event showed me the reality of all I have been reading about pike-wise, in fact I had stumbled across this circle hook thread the day before we went fishing.

 

I was dreading the prospect that Leon may have had to try extract a set of trebles (on a lure possibly) from inside the poor pike. The fact that pike coughed the sprat and circle hook + trace up by itself without getting hooked was quite incredible.

 

It was also the first time I have fished with barbless hooks, and was pleased with the ease with which pike unhooked himself the moment he was put on the unhooking mat, and even more pleased that he didn't manage to do this until he had been landed and there was no tension on the line.

 

Thanks you Leon for coming along and showing me how to handle the pike, your guidance was very much appreciated, and I look forward to fishing with you again sometime soon.

As I bit into the nectarine, it had a crisp juiciness about it that was very pleasurable - until I realized it wasn't a nectarine at all, but A HUMAN HEAD!

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Now if that had been a rig with a set of trebles that I'd lost, the story would have been something quite different.

 

But (and plese take this in the way its intended!) if you had been using a suitable braid/hook strength combination the whole thing would have never come about.

 

I am of course presumming it was the bait/hooks that were snagged and not the line/trace.

And thats my "non indicative opinion"!

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