Circle of Life

Six months and counting. Is your tournament team ready?

Captain Ron Hamlin, the first captain to hit 20,000 billfish releases during his illustrious 35 year career, stood up and told everyone at the prestigious Miami Beach Rod & Reel Club that circle hooks would help anglers catch more sailfish. More importantly, Hamlin claimed that those same billfish would fight harder and would released in perfect health. He went on to add that the increased survival rate would insure anglers catch even more sailfish in the future. This was several years ago, when I scoffed at the idea that a South Florida captain who, at best case scenario, saw ten sailfish strikes per day, would want to risk missing fish by using those silly circle hooks. A crew in Costa Rica who had 30 to 50 shots a day could afford to risk a few misses, but I sure wasn't going to put my charter fishing reputation on the line for some sort of odd shaped gimmick.

A few months later, after hearing all of the rumors pouring out of Central America about these revolutionary new hooks, I finally decided to give the funny looking concoctions a try. I purchased a box of Eagle Claw L197s in size 5/0 simply because we always fished size 5/0 J-hooks with live herring and pilchards. Ten minutes after we started fishing, we blatantly missed a double header. Ten seconds later, I threw the entire box in the ocean. We did, however, go on to land three sailfish that day on standard J-hooks. I vividly recall that two of the three were internally wounded. We told ourselves that even though the fish were gut hooked and bleeding, the sailfish would be fine.