I had a little fun this past weekend on a local pike lake. Messed around with a couple different hooks in hopes of decreasing the mortality rate on pike. I had pretty good success with snelled Octopus hooks in the past, but never tried the large Trueturn hooks before. We loaded 10 tip-ups down with 2 ft. of 40 lb. Fluorcarbon leaders, 5 tip-ups with 3/4" gap Octopus hooks, and another 5 tip-ups with the large 1" gap Trueturns. The hooks appear a little large, that's intentional! I was trying to limit the full injestion and deep hookset. Each tip-up was baited with a 6" herring and fished in traditional pike fishing manner, not allowing the fish to run any great distance. We didn't allow the fish to "turn and swallow" the hook. Instead we let the fish hook themselves while on a full run, only presenting resistance as opposed to a brain-jarring hook set.
The Octopus hook scored impressive results with 1 lost fish, 3 fish hooked through the roof of the mouth, one through the kipe or tip of the nose, and 2 more in the corner of the mouth. No gill or gut hooks involved! The hook was NOT set but rather used in similarity to a circle hook, without the circle hook results! This was the third time this year using the Octopus with only one of many fish hooked fatally.
The Trueturn was a bit dissapointing. We used the same technique of hookset, and allowed the fish no room to "swallow the bait." The hook connected firmly with 5 fish. One firmly planted in the corner of the mouth, but the others were extremely deep, (great if your trying to fillet and release!) The Trueturn was developed for a good hookset, and it didn't let me down! This was supposed to be a catch and release experiment, that ended up as a fishfry! The Trueturn would NOT be my personal favorite for catch and release, but the Octopus had pretty good C&R results!
We're only allowed one hook in the state of Alaska, which limits us to single hook or single treble. I had used quick strikes on other "pike removal" lakes with great results, but most of the lakes I fish are single hook only. All of the pike caught were between 4-9 lbs. not huge but fairly average. The picture below is both rigs shown on the bait. The hook on the right is a straight tied Trueturn hook, on the left is a snelled Octopus hook. Great to have the time to experiment a bit! Thank the good lord for nice weather! -Barleydog
