Anglers that have used soft plastics for catching largemouth bass have always lived by the assumption that to catch those fish on soft plastics you had to jerk and set the hook. If using a circle hook and you jerk to set the hook that creates a problem for the circle hook and how it is designed.

 Setting the hook while using a circle hook will only cause you to miss the fish. The hook is designed to allow the fish to move away with the lure or bait and with nothing more than tension on the line, the fish will set the hook without the angler having to jerk and set the hook.

The urge to set the hook is one of the major problems when using circle hooks with soft plastics. Anglers have learned that some soft plastic applications using circle hooks will catch largemouth bass if they can avoid the jerk. Anglers have been using circle hooks in some soft plastic applications and have been doing so for some time.

Those applications include drop shot fishing, wacky rigging, and when fishing weighless floating worms. When using circle hooks with those techniques, the angler only needs to apply pressure when the fish takes the soft plastic.

Those three techniques avoid the major problem when using circle hooks with soft plastics and that is the need to pull the hook through the body of the soft plastic bait by jerking or setting the hook. In those three techniques I have mentioned, the hook is exposed so the angler is not required to set the hook or jerk the hook through the soft plastic bait into the fish.

Using an exposed circle hook in areas where there is a lot of structure or cover on the bottom will result in hang-ups or at least it will constantly foul the hook. Carolina rigging is one of those applications that is not conducive to using the circle hook since you are dragging the soft plastic across the bottom. An exposed hook is guaranteed to hang up.

I wish the opposite were true because often when using the Carolina rig, the largemouth will swallow the hook in the throat making survival of the fish almost impossible regardless of any attempt by the angler to release the fish.

I have had some recent success with the Carolina rig by only slightly skin hooking the soft plastic. That avoids some hang-ups but you still need to avoid the urge to set the hook and that is the most difficult thing to learn when using the circle hook for any soft plastic application. You can use circle hooks with the Carolina rig if you are fishing areas with a slick or clean bottom but hooking the fish is not always a certainty.

One area where I have had good success using a circle hook with the hook point exposed is when using floating worms like the Zoom Trick worm. This technique presents the lure above the bottom and avoids hang-ups. Again, you must not set the hook but allow the fish to move away and then apply tension on the line.

Most circle hooks until recently were large and were primarily used for fishing with live or cut piecies of bait for large fish like catfish in freshwater and many large fish in saltwater. Those hooks were just too big for any type of soft plastic application.

Professional angler Gary Yamamoto developed a hook some fifteen years ago using the design of an old Hawaiian hook that looks much like today’s circle hook. Yamamoto developed a hook he named the split shot hook and they have been used successfully for years in fishing techniques like split shooting and wacky rigging. The split shot hook looks and acts much like a true circle hook.

In fact, the Yamamoto’s split shot hook is better designed than the true circle hook for use with soft plastics. The bend in the split shot hook allows the soft plastic to be better seated on the hook than with a true circle hook. Yamamoto’s original split shot hooks were very small and were intended for light tackle use.

One of the more popular hook manufactures Gamakatsu has taken Yamamoto’s small split shot designed hooks and has introduced those hooks in larger sizes for heavier soft plastic applications. Gamakatsu now offers the split shot hook in sizes that approximate the popular 1/0 – 3/0 worm hooks.

Improvements continue to be made in hooks for catching largemouth bass with soft palstics so try some of these new hooks. I think you will like them. Good fishing and see you next week.