Crankbaits: Replacing trebles with singles.

[Jim/UT]

I've had a great fall with crankbaits and jerkbaits in shallow water, but the treble hooks have been ripping the fish up a bit. I do mostly C&R, so I'd prefer to be gentler. Do any of you routinely replace trebles with singles? What are some of the tricks?

Jim

[bladebait]

One thing I've done is to replace the treble with a size 12 barrel swivel, just thread it onto the split ring. Next I use appropriate sized gamakatsu siwash hooks and put the eye of the hook through the eye of the barrel swivel and use pliers to pinch together the hook eye. The hooking percentage is comparble to trebles. I mostly did this for steelhead because they are so fast and roll so much that they twist trebles and unravel split rings. With the barrel the hook spins with the fish. Walleye seldom get away. I also did this when we took a trip out to Ft Peck and started catching snot-rockets on cranks. They were much easy to release when you have to dig out 1/3 the amount of hooks.

[Jim/UT]

Neat idea. I'll try putting some together tonight.

Many thanks!

Murph

[stewart]

Are you fishing barbed or debarbed? Just take some pliers to those barbs.

[Jim/UT]

Smashed down already. Cuts release time in half at least.

Jim

[stewart]

I'll have to try the singles on swivels too. I tried the singles just on the split rings, and I don't know if the hooks got pushed up against the body or what, but that didn't work too well.