circle hooks & tip-ups

[gary]

has anyone tried using circle hooks on your tip-ups? I've had good success using them on deadsticks.

[Backwater Eddy]

Yes they work well but you do need to tighten the tension slightly to get the proper run tension on larger baits for pike.

Larger Gamakatsu Octopus wide gap circles, G-Lock, or the Gamakatsu Shiner hooks have worked best for me on vertical presentations.

[RS]

Gary,
Started using Mustad 11/0 last winter with live bait (suckers) and a couple of times with dead bait (smelt). I fell in love with them, only one gut hooked (pickling size pike) the rest were in the corner of the mouth and "very" few misses. These hooks had the point offset a little from the shank, but I could carefully bend it a little closer. I usually would stop them when they were running and start to pull in the line, after a couple of pulls I would give the line a very short hook set as I was pulling the line. Seemed to work for me and by the way the 11/0 hooks I used were not that big, smaller than a .50 cent piece, but they were stout. Great topic, good luck fishing!
RS

[Larry L]

I used them in size 2 and 4 last year for walleyes and ling. I had as many or more swallowed hooks as with regular hooks. I have found that jig heads with a lip hooked minnow work very well for me. The jig head is almost always hanging out of the mouth.