How to Use Circle & Kahle Hooks
- 1). Bait your hook. For live-bait fishing, hook your bait carefully to ensure that it acts lively in the water. Carefully thread the point of a circle or Kahle hook through nostrils of a large baitfish, such as a shiner or gizzard shad. Hook smaller baitfish, such as minnows, through the lips and leeches through the sucker.
- 2). Scale and fillet baitfish--such as suckers, skipjack herring and shad--and hook the pieces through a meaty part of the fillet for catfish. Bait hooks with strips of squid for fluke and flounder. Wire whole dead baitfish to circle hooks when trolling for offshore game species in saltwater.
- 3). Use circle hooks on soft-plastic lures for freshwater and in-shore species. Thread the hook point through the nose of a 4- to 6-inch soft-plastic jerkbait and tube for largemouth and smallmouth bass. The same baits can also be used on in-shore saltwater species, such as redfish, snook and sea trout (weakfish). Tie a drop-shot rig with a circle hook using a Palomar knot, leaving a tag line of 18 to 24 inches. Attach a drop-shot weight to the end of the tag line, and nose-hook a small straight-tail plastic work or soft-plastic jerkbait.
- 4). Hook larger soft-plastic baits with Kahle hooks. These hooks have a longer shank and a wider hook gap, which allow anglers to Texas-rig plastic worms and tube baits. Some models of Kahle hooks come equipped with wire bait holders that are inserted into the nose of soft plastic baits, making rigging plastic baits easier.
- 5). Set the hook by raising the rod tip firmly when using Kahle hook--exactly as you would with a standard J-hook. If you are fishing with bait, pay close attention to your line and bait. Kahle hooks often stick a fish in the back of the mouth or throat, leading to severe injury to the fish. You may need to set the hook more firmly with a "sweep set" if you are with fishing soft-plastic lures rigged weedless.
- 6). Reel your line steadily on strikes when using circle hooks. Resist the urge to forcefully set the hook. Instead, the tension created by reeling line and the weight of the fish causes the hook to clear the fish's throat and mouth and cleanly stick in the corner of the fish's mouth. Be patient. It may take a second or two before you feel the fish's weight on the end of your line.
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