Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
A lot of local fishermen fell in love with circle hooks back in the 1990’s after discovering how deadly effective they were for tuna chunking. I don’t know why it took me so long to wise-up and adopt them into our sharking program. I guess it was because we became so comfortable with traditional J-hooks that we didn’t want to make a change and maybe start messing around with our success rate. However, we eventually began using circle-hooks on a trial basis while light tackle fishing for small sharks, and one of the first things we noticed was that we certainly did affect our success rate – we improved it!
Adopting circle hooks to our offshore trips for big sharks was a little more involved because the baits we used were often so large that I was concerned they would impede the smaller hook from properly imbedding in the shark. We overcame this problem by simply using larger circle hooks, scaling down the size of our baits a bit, and sometimes getting a little creative in how we attached the hook to the bait. Even for the larger sharks the circle hooks have worked so well that it wasn’t long before they became the only hook we used on all shark rigs.
Most anglers are aware that, since circle hooks usually imbed in the corner of a fish’s jaw rather than in it’s throat or stomach, they are much less likely to cause life-threatening injuries to fish that are released. Since most recreationally caught sharks are released, this benefit alone makes them an ideal tool for shark fishing. But sharkers will find that the benefits of using circle hooks goes far beyond helping minimize post-release mortality.
The corner of a shark’s mouth is thick and fleshy, making it an excellent location for a hook to hold with little chance of it tearing out. Once a circle hook takes hold, fishermen are free to fight a shark with little fear that their hook might pull out during the battle or at the boat side. Also, during the fight, even a steel leader can break if it is constantly raked across the shark’s teeth. With the hook in the corner of the mouth there’s much less chance that the leader will contact the teeth and allow the fish a chance to bite, grind or kink its way through it.
With conventional J-hooks we would usually fish with our reels in free-spool, then when a shark picked up a bait we would give it a slight drop back, throw the reel in gear and repeatedly strike the fish HARD to drive the hook home. Since the shark was often quite far from the boat when we’d set the hook, we found that the stretch of monofilament line was too much to consistently allow for a good hook-set. Consequently, we’d load our shark reels with Dacron or other types of braided line that effectively had no stretch. The process worked, but the fact that it required extra-sharp hooks, special line, a feel for when the “right” time to set the hook and the physical ability to be able to really haul back and set a hook on heavy tackle meant that inexperienced anglers often had a problem properly connecting to a shark.
By the simple fact that they are designed to hang on to a fish by latching over the corner of the jaw, rather than imbedding directly into something, circle hooks have pretty much eliminated all of those issues. For one thing, other than touching up the point of a hook with a file once in a while, we rarely find a need to sharpen circle hooks. We’ll take new hooks right from the box, smash down the barb, twist them to the leader, stick them in the bait, and we’re fishing – it’s that simple!
We take the barb off because we’ve found that the only use for a barb on a circle hook is to help keep the bait from working its way off the hook – which rarely happens. Barbs are not needed to help hold the hook in the fish during the battle, and they only make it more difficult to remove the hook when the shark has been brought to the boat. The only other modification we make to our circle hooks is that we’ll bend out any offset that might have been put in during their manufacturer. Offset circle hooks have a greater chance of deep-hooking a fish, which defeats much of the purpose of using the hooks in the first place. Whenever possible, we purchase non-offset hooks and then don’t have to worry about bending them back.
From a fishing standpoint, using circle hooks makes life so much simpler. Instead of worrying about drop-backs and hook setting, all we do is send our baits out to the desired distance from the boat, set the reels in strike, and when a shark takes the bait the angler needs only to pick up the rod and start cranking – that’s it. As soon as the line comes tight and the shark starts pulling against the drag, the hook will slip into place. Snatching back on the rod is a hard habit for many experienced anglers to break, but the action can pull a circle hook out of a fish’s mouth before it latches over the jaw. This is one of the few ways a fisherman might goof up and miss a bite.
Finally, circle hooks are so efficient at holding on to fish that even if during the battle the angler quits cranking, the shark makes a run toward the boat, or there is some other kind of goof-up or malfunction that allows the shark to get a lot of slack line – there is very little chance that it will throw the hook. That feature in itself is makes using circle hooks for sharks a no-brainer!
I wish I could say what the best size and type of circle hook is, but at this point in time the different hook manufacturers still haven’t come up with any kind of uniform sizing. For example; if the consumer buys a 13/0 hook from one manufacturer it will likely be entirely different in size and probably in shape, than a 13/0 hook made by someone else. This means that unless anglers know exactly what size and brand they want, and the particular tackle shop carries what they are looking for, the best they can do is examine all the options in the store until they find a hook that “looks” like it’s about what they need. I can say, however, that what we’ve been using for sharks have been non-offset #39960D 13/0 and 16/0 circle hooks made by the Mustad Company. The 13/0 hooks are used for the smaller three to five-foot sharks we typically catch in the near shore waters, while the 16/0 hooks work better when we are fishing farther offshore with larger baits for larger sharks.
Captain Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and captain of the charter boat “Fish Finder”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center.