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gling enjoyment. Some of these bass might have lived if the anglers had used more care in handling and/or barbless hooks. Bass in Fork and similar waters may be caught repeatedly, > My partners and I believe we caught several of the same bass when we returned to a hot-spot on a following day.
Barbless hooks reduce damage to mouth and throat tissues when hooks are removed. They also make the removal process much easier, allowing short-shanked hooks to be reversed out with needle-nosed pliers, and letting anglers carefully go through the gill slit to reverse long-shanked worm hooks caught fairly deep in the throat. The finding of science is that bass are usually more likely to survive if even deeply taken hooks are removed. Don't cut leaders unless you have no choice, and if you must leave a hook in a bass, leave a foot or more of the leader outside the fish to let it feed normally while recovering and eliminating the hook naturally. My article " Hooks In or
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Out," on this page provides details.
The barbs on hooks require harder hooks sets, and bass hook more bass with barbless hooks. We use them much of the time, and lose very few bass in the process. There are drawbacks, however. The barbs hold live bait on the hook, and much be used with live baits. Circle hooks are best here, unless the water is full of snags. Moreover, the barbs keep worms and other plastics in position for repetitive casting. When bass are biting well I use barbless worm hooks to protect the many bass we will hook and release, But, If the bite is slow, I use barbed hooks to let me cast and cast again without realigning the plastic baits.
Each sportsman angler must make his choices. Decide for yourself when the health of the fish and the fishery is more important than slightly increasing your fishing success
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(Continued
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fer hook injuries are much greater. Any successful angler who routinely fishes Lake Fork, for example, while catch many badly injured bass. This spring, I estimate more than 50 percent of my catch at Fork had missing, bleeding, and/ or baldly torn jaw bones and tissues. I caught many fish with badly distorted and disfigured mouths.
Some of the damaged bass were carrying hooks that someone had clearly cut off the leader at the hook. The unremoved hooks were fairly deep in the gullets of these bass and blocked any possibility that the fish could have eaten successfully. Many of the hook-bearing bass were thin an obviously food deprived. Most of these hooks could have been successfully removed. I removed several, but removing these hooks would have been much easier and less damaging if they were barbless.
Throughout the spring, I would see one or two nice Fork bass float by, belly up every day -- wasted for either food or future an
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