Barbed or Barbless

There has in the past been some debate on the merits or otherwise of barbless hooks. Some leading anglers, including Barrie Rickards beleive that barbless hooks do more damage than barbed.

My own practise is to use micro-barbed or barbs slightly pinched down were barbed hooks are allowed.

What do you think?

All pike trebles have there barbs pinched down by myself. I am still not sure about carp as I have had hook tears from both barbed and barbless. I switched to Owner cutting points when fishing Catch 22 in Norfolk as the fish have very soft mouths and these hooks never once tore or slipped.

Yes there has been a lot of debate on this particular subject, and quite rightly so, in my opinion.

However, I am still not convinced either way!

The majority of the waters I fish require anglers to use 'barbless' hooks, there my choice of hook has been determined by this. Having looked at the different hooks available in my local tackle shop, and after much deliberation, I chose the 'Terry Eustace Barbless Penetrator Two'.

They have a good point and consist of a special bend which, supposedly, minimises hook tear.

Fishing commercial carp waters a lot which exclusively have a barbless hook policy I can safely assure you that the condition of their mouths are a lot better than venues I fish where no such policy applies. I do think though that a lot more thought should go into the design of hook patterns as these I think can cause as much damage as barbs. An example of this was the bent hook which was discarded from respectable fishing over ten years ago due to the the occurance of double hooking and twisting causing mouth damage. We all know that certain patterns are better hookers than others this occurs for certain reasons but a time must occure when the mechanics of certain hook designs cause more damage than is reasonably acceptable. Not only should we consider the banning of barbed hooks we should also look at such things as inturned points, off set points and also inturned eyes. After all self regulation look far better from a public relations point of view.

Gary, but the bent hook is back and being supplied by Nash etc...!!!!!
It looks identical to a hook Partridge discontinued about 8 years ago

Thanks for that Rob I,ll nip down my local tackle shop and boycott them.

Nowadays I fish with barbless, the thing that swung me was while chubbing, and having several chub on barbless which were unhooked without incident. After losing a hook and replacing it with a barbed version of the same patten, when the fish were un-hooked they jumped as if they felt it. I know it's not exactly scientific but there you go.

I've never seen evidence of barbless hooks slipping, but I have seen plenty of fishes mouths harmed by barbed in heavily fished waters.

As for piking, the semi-barbless come into their own not just for un-hooking reduce the danger from flying trebles, and hooks getting caught in landing nets.

Does anyone nip the barbs down on their lures?

I have been using the new Preston barbless hooks in little blue packs-great hooks and I am well impressed.
I moved to barbless a couple of years ago for winter chubbing and barbel. Once a hook is in a barbels mouth-its IN!!!!!
As for damage, I am not sure , but some of the tears must be caused by over heavy rods fished close in and extreme pressure on the hook hold.
Not entirely sure though,

Not wishing to disagree with Gary.......
but I never had any issues with the original bent hook, there is a lot of hearsay and speculation about it, but I've used it and have never had any problems with it, whatsoever.
The Partridge Piggyback hook, or now that F** have copied it, the series 5, is an absolutely abysmal hook that does double hook right upto the eye.
That hook pattern should be banned.

I only ever use barbless when rules make me.
Having bench tested many hook patterns into wax, pork fat and many different types of fruit to try to ascertain hooking efficiency (pricking, skid, tear, loosening etc) I would suggest that barbless hooks in the larger versions have a tendency to rotate in the hole causing the opening to widen, barbed versions seem to hold in place (because of the barb).
This then moves the stress to the hook shank, but that is another matter (e.g. weak points in hooks, not barbed versus barbless)

Not wishing to disagree with carp angler but If you had the choice of being dragged around by a hook in your lip for five minutes which hook would you prefare barbed , barbless ,or bent ?. I agree that barbless hook holds can widen due to the action of the hook but when unhooked it only leaves little more than a puncture wound which is quite clean and will soon heal. Where as a barbed hook when removed nearly always removes a small sliver of skin which the fish has to regenerate in order to heal its self thus taking longer to heal and leaving a bigger scar. As for your assertion that the bent hook should never of been regarded as a serious hazard to fish I bow to your superior knowledge and experience as a carp angler.
P.S. At least we agree on Wendy Turner Webster.

Rik..yes, thats the hook I ment, the Fix...not Nash...Sorry mr. Nash!

As for a bent hook causing damage...i strongly believe it depends on the way the fish feed and fight.

I used it for 2 years on a water and NEVER had a problem, I moved to another water, and the first two fish I hooked both double hooked....so I stopped. These fish were bold feeders who woofed down the baits, the others wer finicky and were hooked on the edge of the mouth.

Anyone else experienced this?

Another thing, there is a world of difference in using a barbless size 20 for 6 oz roach to using a size 4 hook for hard fighting carp. I have always used barbless when pleasure fishing for silver fish.

What do you mean by double hooked? and what damages is done to the fish by this? Sorry about this but never even seen a bent hook!
Windy

I nip down barbs on lures with bigger hooks, but I'll admit I've lost a lot of fish because of it -although my lack of lure fishing experience probably played a part as well.

I almost always use barbless hooks with lives and deads (usually Partridge/Kamasan/ET Extra Strong etc...), the exceptions being shallow water where it's hard to stop a good fish tailwalking and zander, which often come off barbless hooks.

Andrew, A bent hhok is basically a very long shank hook with either a steady or pronounced bent in it.

Double hooking is where the point goes through the flesh, maybe twists and then embeds itself in another part of the mouth. This effectivily stiched the skin together. It can be horrendous if used with barbed hooks.

I always use barbless for float fishing in the smaller sizes,a fine wire crystal bend stays in really well. With bigger fish it's not always possible to backwind as well and I feel a hook with a small or pinched barb is superior. I don't seem to lose many fish.........probably regret saying that!

I have been using barbless only for the past 5 years as our club has a barbless only rule for all our competitions.After some initial doubts i have found an impovement in my hook up rates,with less fish being bumped.

It may be that i am only using hooks in the smaller sizes (24's-12's)but they certainly seem to penetrate better,especially with perch.

Two of the patterns that i find most usefull are the mustad longpoints and the new range of PR hooks fron preston innovations,both seem to have a variety of patterns to cover most situations.

Has anyone tried the Drennan Nu Hooks yet.and if so what do you think of them?

I`ve use the nu hooks a lot ,the carp patterns are excellent for meat and paste due to their long shanks and wide gapes.But beware the sizes are a bit iffy.

Thought I'd add my two-penn'orth... Barbed hooks? Ban 'em... My number one concern is for the fish... in the event of a break-off, a fish sheds a barbless hook with no problems - with a barbed hook (specially on lures - and yes, I crimp mine down), you run the risk of leaving the fish with it's mouth sewn up, unable to eat, therefore dead... very slowly... Okay, you MIGHT lose the odd one or two, but... so what? At least you have the chance to catch it again later on! Okay - tight lines... (and if you manage THAT, you won't lose any on barbless anyway!) =)

I would like to hear Barrie Rickards or Tony Miles response to that.

Barbed or Barbless now that will get me going. Right?I think it depends on what we are trying to achieve. Are you trying to catch a fish or are you trying to minimise damage to a fish ?

If catching is the be all and end all, then give me barbed hooks any day of the week. Please dont anyone try and convince me that a Barbless hook "stays in better" than a barbed one. Thats just not true. Anyone who has ever caught a barbed hook up in there Jumper/Teeshirt/net etc will bear testament to that?.you end up cutting a hole in it with your scissors to get the bloody thing out. Barbless?.slips out no fuss. Why should it be different in a fishes mouth ? As for the often quoted point about barbless hooks "penetrating in further and leading to a better hook hold" Think about it, you have a 20 pound Carp pulling for all its worth on one end and an angler armed with 15 pound line pulling for all he is worth at the other?.dont try and tell me that a tiny barb is going to stop the hook going in as far as it can go!

OK so its Barbed for catching but what about mouth damage ? People always go on about inturned or straight points, downturned or straight eyes, curved shanks etc etc. IMO your looking at it from the wrong angle. In the majority of cases really bad mouth damage occurs at the point of unhooking Not at the point of playing. Sorry but I have to say it lots of anglers are just too careless and try and rip the hook out?.how many of you carry a pair of wire cutters in your unhooking kit I wonder ? Sometimes its easier to snip off the eye and feed the hook through the wrong way so to speak.
Here is another example?how many of you have landed little Roach with their whole top lips ripped off ? ?.do you think thats caused while playing the fish ? I think not! Its caused by the angler being too lazy to use a disgorger to remove a barbed hook and so rips it out instead along with half the fishes face. Barbless dont avoid this problem totally but what they do allow for is a greater degree of "cackhandedness" on the anglers part. Any Match angler trying to amass a big net of small fish will tell you about the benefits of using barbless hooks?much quicker and easier to get the fish off them and get he bait back in the water.

Just a couple of other points I think Davys observation about the Chub jumping when he unhooked it is a cracker. Absolutely spot on. No technical mumbo jumbo just a good solid practical example. The other point I want to comment on is when someone mentioned about using long pointed barbelss for Perch. I know that Steve Burke has been going on for ages about the possible dangers of patterns like that for Perch. Problem is they have their hearts very near the back of their gullets and a hook set well back that penetrates too far in could kill them. I have my doubts about this as I explained with he Carp example above but I thought its worth mentioning as he is obviously a very experienced Perch fisherman and for smaller species that dont pull so hard it could be a valid point.