A modern micro-barbed hook
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What on earth is there to say about barbless hooks - doesn't everyone use them nowadays? Well, no, they don't. And I'd like to give some of my reasons why not.
Firstly, let's deal with the conservationist faction, because there's an irrelevance about this caucus that irritates me.
You'll hear and read of various bodies, nothing whatever to do with angling (except that they want us off the waters perhaps?) singing the praises of barbless hooks. They know nothing at all about hooks - barbless or otherwise.
The only views of any value to the angler are those which emanate from the anglers themselves, from experienced anglers, or from angling officials who fish. Angling officials who do not fish get all their 'knowledge' secondhand, on the notoriously unreliable grapevine, and their opinions are as worthless as those of non-anglers on the subject.
I emphasise the word experienced in the last paragraph because one does read so often letters in the angling press, from anglers who have just taken up the sport, recommending the use of barbless hooks. Why?
What on earth do they know about the matter? Are they not trying to appease those who criticise angling, just like those officials in angling who take the same line?
This is no way to advance angling or its cause. Only two things matter: whether or not barbless hooks are better for fish? And whether or not they are better for angling? Clearly you can have no valuable viewpoint on these two questions if you have only fished for 'five minutes' or have never fished at all.
So what do I know about it? I have used barbless and semi-barbless hooks since the late 1950s, in various experiments and tests, for a variety of species and in many waters. I am not a modern convert to barbless hooks, but write from experience.
I first started down the barbless track because I thought the barbs on pike hooks were dreadful - enormously rank, often wrongly positioned, and the chance of penetration on the strike must have been low.
The galvanised, barbed hooks on some lures reduce the chance of penetration
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This was especially true of the galvanised hooks that so often adorned lures such as plugs and spoons.
Now, I don't know if you have ever tried to file down the barb on a galvanised hook, but I can tell you it is not easy. I had to take mine to work and have them done on a grinding wheel! If you try to press them down they snap off, leaving a small bumb - the barb base.
Bronzed hooks can usually be pressed down, or filed down, and they also snap occasionally. I tried all modes: full barbs, half pressed, pressed so that a mere whisker point remained, fully pressed, snapped off, and fully removed (the last being just like a modern barbless hook).
I proved three things fairly quickly:
1) rank barbs, ie, the traditional barbs, were totally unnecessary
2) they impeded the strike quite badly and far more fish fell off fully barbed hooks than off hooks with a smaller barb
3) the best hooker and holder of all is the whisker version. It requires only the tiniest of barbs to hold a fish.
So one thing that manufacturers could attend to, as a universal factor, was to make hooks with very small barbs. These barbs should not be too close to the hook bend, or purchase is quite adversely affected.
And for lure fishing with plugs and spoons, it seemed to me quite clear that totally barbless hooks were a disaster. Even holding a fish hard didn't always work, especially if they leapt and created slack line (similarly when swimming towards the angler).
Again, small or whisker barbs were best. Galvanised hooks with the barb snapped off, leaving an angular protuberance, were not too bad - in fact it is amazing how little a 'barb' is needed to hold a fish well.
I object to people telling me I should use barbless
Many pike anglers today go the whole hog and use semi-barbless hooks (one hook point of a treble will have a barb on it or the bait falls off!). I have no objection to this (except for one point I'll come to later), but I do have the most serious objections to people telling me that I must use barbless hooks.
I would extend my argument about lure fishing and barbs: in my experience barbless hooks lose fish frequently. There is no doubt at all that barbless hooks allow you to unhook pike easier, but by the same token the pike can unhook itself more easily. Yes, it is true that barbless hooks can be removed from micromesh netting easier, but this is irrelevant to the two questions I've already posed.
However, the ease of unhooking from net or fish are the two reasons why many modern pikers use semi-barbed hooks; added to the fact that some anglers allow the pike to swallow the bait too deeply, simply because they know they can get the hooks out.
I believe that this last factor is one of the causes of the decline of 'discovered' pike waters. Microbarbs or whisker barbs are all that is necessary to hook and hold fish, and they are almost as easy to remove as barbless hooks. (Incidentally, when many pikers land their fish they find that it is hooked and held by one barbed point, not by the barbless ones!).
I have met anglers who have lost pike after pike, yet didn't have the gumption to try small-barb hooks instead of barbless. One chap had had six runs in a season, all from big fish temporarily on the end of his line, and each fish came off.
I saw him hook and lose the last of these, which is how we came to be discussing it. He struck the fish well, got a good bend in the rod, but halfway through the battle the fish 'inexplicably' got off! Many anglers do not realise the diving and gyrations that go on underwa¬ter when a good pike is hooked.
I hope this chap learned his lesson. I certainly told him my opinion. Of course, very experienced anglers can get away with semi-barbless hooks because they know exactly how to hold the fish at all times. I've done it often enough myself. But in principle it is unnecessary and inefficient.
Some anglers seem resigned to dropping off a lot of the fish they hook, then say they'd have just the same results on barbed hooks. Well, I don't know what is acceptable to others, but a conversion rate of less than 90 per cent I would regard as bad.
What about trout fishing then? It has always seemed to me that game fishing hooks are closer to antediluvian designs than in any other form of fishing. Even today you'll see many hooks where the barb is too big and too close to the hook bend, leaving little for a decent purchase.
I first came across the problem when 'big water' trouting, and it seemed that too many rainbows came unstuck just after striking, usually when they leapt. Other anglers fishing with me, my mentors really, seemed to accept a loss ratio of 2:1 meaning only every third fish was landed. This seemed crazy to me, so I set about working out what was wrong.
Good strikes were made, and I thought that the hook was in over the barb. But was it? I decided to press down the barb so that the merest whisker showed.
This solved the problem immediately and the next 12 fish I hooked actually stayed on, whereas my companions on the same stretch of bank lost a dozen fish between them!
You'd think they'd give pressed barbs, or whisker barbs a try, but they didn't, wouldn't, and still don't! They are content to miss more than 50 per cent of their takes/strikes. Fair enough, if that's what they want. I should add that recently there had been a considerable improvement in trout hooks, but there's still a fair way to go.
What about match angling, for many match anglers use barbless hooks? I bought some hooks recently - size 22s, 20s and 18s, which were labelled 'barbless'. I don't know why, because they had minute, excellent barbs!
Several years ago now a friend of mine, a leading matchman, said to me: "You get more bites on barbless hooks you know."
"Rubbish," I said, but he was right. (It's essential to keep an open mind). When I put it into practice, I found that the reason you get more bites is that when the float dips or disappears it is often well after the fish has mouthed the bait. And in dace fishing for example, you can be too late by a second.
If a roach mouths the bait and the resistance causes the hook to penetrate its lip (it only goes as far as the barb until you strike), the fish feels the drag, not the penetration of the hook, and tries to eject the hook, which is when the float goes under, often.
With a barbless hook it feels no drag from the barb and therefore hangs on positively to the bait. The result is that you seem to get more bites or, at least, more firm bites that you can hit. So in match angling there's a good reason for using either barbless hooks or ones with microbarbs.
I'd challenge the theory that barbless hooks prevent fish from falling off, however. Fish need to be wound in and swung in on a taut line. If you were to drop your catch into a bucket of water and release the tension that roach will soon come off. Try it and see.
Penetrates easier with no barb
You may have noticed that implicit in the above paragraphs on small fish is the fact that the hook penetrates easier with no barb to impede it.
In some circumstances a strike is superfluous anyway. This is unquestionably the case - it goes in easier and comes out easier. Much more importantly the barbless hook penetrates more deeply than a barbed hook, which really only goes in a little way over the barb.
Also, in a long fight with a big fish, the hook, if barbless, may go in and out several times. You need to ask yourself whether this is a good thing. In many forms of fishing it might not matter, but I believe that in pike fishing it does matter, especially when anglers allow the fish to swallow the bait a bit more deeply to 'make certain'. In those cases, repeated deep penetration of the hook can cause damage, even fatal damage. I know of more than one water, with a 'barbless only' rule, where far too many 'inexplicable' fish deaths have occurred in perfectly healthy looking fish. I think I know the reason.
Finally, several issues arise from all this. Use of barbless, semi-barbless, pressed-barb, microbarb or whatever, is, or should be, a personal choice. Bans of one kind or another prove a closed mind, or ignorance. Manufacturers still haven't got the hooks right, though there are exceptions. Megabarbs are wrong, microbarbs and whisker barbs are not only good, but are all that is necessary in angling.
Completely barbless hooks are, in my view, at best unnecessary, except perhaps in match fishing. But non-anglers who introduce 'barbless only' rules, or force them through conservationist bodies, should be shot.
Eddie Caldwell
