With the J hooks, you will deeply hook around 30% of the fish, especially if you are slow to tighten the drag like we are. We keep most of our catch, so it's not that important. If releasing fish and having a very high survival rate is important to you, circle hooks are a slightly better choice.
The only redfish we've ever released that went belly up was one that got stuck in the anchor line and required much too much fiddling to finally set free. We already had our limit, but a boat fishing close to us scooped him up and put him in their ice chest. Survival rates with deeply hooked fish can be pretty high if you cut the leader without ever trying to get the hook out and minimize the time out of the water.
We've caught numerous fish with signs of prior deep hooking that had obviously survived for the long haul. Some hooks rust out, some are encased in tissue, and some simply pass through. One hook was barely hanging on having passed all the way through. The knot and hook were identical to what we use, so I suspect it was a deeply hooked fish that we had released a week or two earlier.
|