The Ultimate Carp Fishing Hook???

Barbless wide gape hooks with a beaked point and interned eye.

 

At the beginning of the 2022 season I decided to keep a record of takes which resulted in fish being landed.

A take was only included in the figures if the fish had been on for more than 5 seconds.

I stopped at the beginning of the summer because the results were obvious.

Out of 114 takes 108 fish were landed, that's 94.7% success rate. 

I knew the figures would be good but the results far exceeded my expectations. 

It just so happened that the first week of saw 3x 70's landed in a row by one angler, possibly a record to this day.

Swapping to barbless hooks has been a game changer for our fishery and customers.

 

Read on for the full story of how and why we changed to the pattern of hook.

In the early years of Echo pool it soon became obvious that wide gape hooks caused less damage to our fish, because of this we only allowed wide gape Micro barbed.

Back then I absolutely hated barbless hooks, the damage I'd seen them do was unbelievable especially a long shanked version.

The change came about purely by accident during one of my own sessions.
I'd tied up new rigs with hooks from a new packet, all was going well and I had 7 fish on the bounce that all had noticeable good clean hook holds.
I don't like tying rigs and wasting money so I carry on using a hook until it no longer catches in my thumbnail. It was while doing this that I noticed the hook was barbless, I checked the other rods and sure enough all had barbless hooks on them meaning all 7 fish were caught on the same hooks.

Rather than switching back to micro barbed I decided to carry on the session using the same hooks to see if the results stayed the same, to my amazement they did and I had one of my best sessions ever.

For my own piece of mind I needed to understand what the difference was, to cut a long story short I ended up sticking barbed and barbless hooks in my arm. Believe me I tried using other materials first.

What was really surprising was the additional force needed to push the hook in past the barb, where as the barbless would go in straight to the bend with very little force at all.
I'm 100% confident that this is the key to their effectiveness. I can easily see how a barbed hook will prick the mouth then tear forward before going in past the barb or coming out of the mouth completely whereas a barbless can go straight in to the bend without any hindrance.

We didn't instantly change over to barbless but what we did do was ask our regulars to use them and by the end of the season had the full picture.

What we found was that the hook needed to be a very specific pattern.
Wide gape barbless with a beaked point and slightly in-turned eye.
A straight point and straight eye tended to jump around in the mouth and cause damage or the fish would be lost while being played.
I'm convinced that the beaked point and in-turned eye act like a vice, as pressure is put on it squeezes the flesh together making for the perfect hook hold.
Obviously removing the hook is much easier and doesn't cause any additional damage.