Learning to Love the Circle Hook
True story: Hanna and I almost got “divorced” before we got married.
Our first vacation together was to Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire in June of 2004 and the smallies were spawning everywhere. She could pitch a bait into their beds and get them to eat it, but when I yelled “Set the hook,” she just gave a half-hearted pull and inevitably lost the fish.
So the next time I yelled “Set the hook” louder and she did the same thing. Raised on a TV diet of Roland Martin hooksets, I knew that you had to try to drive steel through their brains, but apparently she hadn’t watched the same shows and I wasn’t very good at explaining what to do. By the time she’d lost three fish that I could have landed easily, I was apoplectic and she was looking for flights home.
In later years after she figured it out, she still marveled at my boat-rocking hookset. I’m occasionally a bit too frenzied, as evidenced by tungsten weights flying by our heads, but overall in bass world it has served me well. That’s why I was so confused when we started fishing offshore. Big fish, big baits, wimpy hooksets seem to be the norm. Here’s why:
