Personal best pickerel

[J.A. Veil]

This morning I fished in four different Severn tributaries looking for pickerel. I cast an XRap 8 (with treble hooks replaced with inline J hooks) and a 12 Fathom Fat Sam mullet paddletail on a 1/8-oz jighead for pickerel. I had no bites in the first and second tributaries nor in the first portion of the third tributary. While still in the third tributary, I caught a small pickerel followed by a personal best 24.5” whopper that hit the paddletail. I finished the morning with 10 pickerel. I also trolled paddletails while moving between tributaries. I covered roughly 6 miles while trolling and never had a bite.

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[DuffDynasty]

Congrats John on your new PB! That is one chunky torpedo with teeth. I've caught several of them that long, but definitely not as fat.

On a side note, I have followed your lead regarding replacing treble hooks with a single hook(s) on all of my lures. I have not noticed any reduction in hooking into fish. If they are hungry, a single hook is all you need.

[J.A. Veil]

Congrats John on your new PB! That is one chunky torpedo with teeth. I've caught several of them that long, but definitely not as fat.

On a side note, I have followed your lead regarding replacing treble hooks with a single hook(s) on all of my lures. I have not noticed any reduction in hooking into fish. If they are hungry, a single hook is all you need.

I have been fishing for pickerel in the tidal Severn River for roughly 15 years. During that time, I caught two fish of 24" but nothing larger. I caught many pickerel this winter, but most were quite small and none of them was larger than 21.5". The big fish this morning was a pleasant surprise.

I'm glad to hear that you and others are moving away from treble hooks. I have visited the MirroLure factory in Largo, FL (suburb of Tampa) several times and met the owner. I asked him why they do not offer their lures with J hooks. He told me that most of his customers want the trebles and think they offer better hookups. I suspect in a decade things may be different, but it is not an easy transition.

On some of my hard plastics, I replace the trebles with J hooks (inline hooks on crankbaits or regular J hooks with bucktail on my poppers). I also follow a different approach for a few other lures. I leave the two treble hooks in place. I clip just the hook point off two of the three prongs and crush the barb on the third point. This keeps the weight and balance similar to the original treble set up.

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I don't have enough data to say which of the two approaches works better in: a) hook ups, b) maintaining a good swimming motion, and c) ease of release for the fish and safer handling for the angler.

[bignose]

The only difference between that fish and a small alligator are legs.

[Jman]

Congrats John - that's a great catch! Hopefully there will be more to come for you.

[Tim Elliott]

Awesome job John, pickerel love those stickbaits as you mentioned. What put me on those single hooks was a trip to the Magothy back in November of last year. I spotted a bright orange plug that was snagged on an old pier and I immediately paddled towards it and freed the lure. It had single hooks attached to it and I found that the hook-up ratio was overall pretty good. Fate had my side as every pickerel landed was over 20 inches but anything less came unbuttoned.

I also purchased two for $5 stickbaits at the Pasadena show, a yellow-perch patterned plug and a pink Yo-Zuri plug. I used your method of clipping off two of the treble points and pinching the barb on the remaining point. So far, I have caught only one pickerel on each lure but I have not used them exclusively to tell if one approach is better than the other.

[Mark]

I switched to single hooks on solid plastic baits years ago. I distinctly remember the reason. I had hooked an undersized striper on a Rat-L-Trap under the USNA bridge in the Severn River. It somehow managed to get both treble hooks into its mouth. It took me minutes to unhook that fish and I'm positive I contributed to C&R striper mortality that day. I immediately put the rod with the Rat-L-Trap back into its holder and fished with single hook jigs and paddletails the rest of the day.

I researched the topic online and learned about in-line hooks. They are hooks with the eye "in-line" with the hook point. Note that normal J hooks have the eye perpendicular to the hook point. If you place a normal J hook on a crankbait via the existing split ring the hook point will either dangle left or right of center of the bait. That may impede hookups, or it may not. It depends on the approach of the attacking fish. I prefer the hook point to hang precisely on the centerline so I use inline hooks. You can overcome the left/right angle of traditional J hooks by adding a second split ring to the first. Then they will hang on the centerline of the bait.

I further found online charts that offered hook size conversion charts for changing trebles to in-line hooks on my lures. There are many sites today with that information. You can Google them or you can also use this rule of thumb for conversions:

Use an in-line hook with hook gap as wide as the entire treble hook you are replacing. That's what I do today.

The next thing to keep in mind is the placement of the inline hooks on the lure bodies.

For subsurface lures I place the hook like these in this photo:

Trebles2.jpg

Note that the hook under the body of the bait rides with the gap open toward the front of the lure. That's important because if you place it the other way, the hook point will rise to the belly of the lure as you retrieve or troll it and that will definitely reduce hookups. The placement of the back hook is not as critical, I believe. Either way, hook up or down, will work. I always rig them so that hook point is up. I do that because I think it reduces the chance of the two hooks tangling under the body of the lure.

For surface lures, I do something else as seen below:

Trebles1A.jpg

Note that I remove the middle treble hook completely. I replace the back treble with an inline hook. I also place that hook point down. Again, I don't believe it matters for hookups. After all, many of the soft plastic surface baits, like hollow frogs, have upturned hooks. I place my inline hooks down on my poppers because that is how I have used fly rod poppers for years. I know they work just fine with the hook point facing down.

An advantage of removing the center hook is that you can use the bait body itself as a handle to subdue a hooked fish at the side of your kayak.

In making these hook conversions, a pair of split ring pliers is invaluable. It's really hard to pry those rings apart by other manual means.

IMG_3322.jpg

I use these piers also when I make jig spinners. That's how I attach the spinner blades to the wire arms that extend from the jig.

Finally, as to the subject of this thread, that 24 incher is a nice catch for John. I'm glad to see larger pickerel return to our tidal waters.

I had actually stopped using crankbaits with trebles when fishing for pickerel for the opposite reason of my striper story above. I found that more often than not, pickerel spit my lures with trebles back at me. I think that's due to their nature of sometimes mouthing a lure before they clamp down. I would attempt to set the hook before they firmly bit down and I believe the trebles actually reduced hook penetration. I had much better success with single hook lures and flies. So that was another reason for eliminating trebles from my tackle.

[summersoff]

Fellas, I haven’t switched any of my hooks to singles yet, but looking to switch over. Would you mind listing a couple of the exact hooks you’re using for a couple of your lures? Just to give me a ballpark what to order.
I hate the damage the trebles do to schoolies. I really think everyone has gotten better with catch and release for the larger stripers, but we still treat the schoolies like crap and we mangle them.
Any luck switching over on top water? Say a jumpin minnow or a smack-it?
Thanks

[Mark]

summersoff,

I use Owner replacement hooks:

https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/Owne...page-OSRH.html

1/0 and 2/0 Owner hooks are the sizes I use the most.

As I stated above you can search online for plenty of guidance on this. Here's a video I found and this fellow does precisely what I do with respect to the size:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TngE-umS36k

At about 1 minute and 20 seconds into the video, he shows how to match the gap of the treble to the gap of the replacement inline hook. That's all you really need to do.

There are also conversion charts online. There's one in the Owner hook link I shared with you if you scroll down the page. But there is some variance in hook sizes by brand and the charts may not synchronize with the actual actual hooks you wish to replace. I think it's better to do it visually by matching the gap of the hooks you intend to replace.

I have not used the specific topwater baits you mentioned. But I showed how I rig my topwater baits in my post above. The topwater baits in my photos have caught plenty of stripers as you see them rigged with a single inline hook -- one hook on the back with the point turned down. That's the same way most flyrod anglers fish their their poppers and sliders. It works.

You can also use standard J-hooks to replace trebles. But as I wrote in my original post, you'll have to add a second split ring to get the J-hook to hang precisely inline with the bait. The inline hooks do a much neater job.

Good luck,

[J.A. Veil]

I am not as precise as Mark when replacing trebles with inline hooks. For me, it is mostly eyeballing to see what size hooks looks about right. I never got around to learning how hooks are sized (e.g., 1/0, 2/0).

I have not ordered inline hooks online, but have bought them in tackle shops so I can see exactly what I am getting. I have also noticed that some of the inline hooks are made of thicker wire stock than others of similar overall size. I prefer the thinner ones myself. I don't always use the same size hook in the front and rear positions. The blue plug shown in the photo catches most of the pickerel on the rear hook. Other fish species may feed in a different manner and could hit the front hook more often.

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You asked about adding hooks to topwater plugs. I have a favorite saltwater popper (Mirrolure C-Eye Poppa Mullet) that comes with two trebles. They do work (I caught two specs on a single cast -- on one each hook -- in Tampa Bay last year).

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But for use at home, I remove both trebles and add a single larger J hook with bucktail. If you tie flies, you can add the hair yourself. I do not tie, and buy the haired hooks at one of the winter tackle shows.

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