Conservation Benefit of Circle Hooks for Striped Bass

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WB Staff
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Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2012 10:56 am

Conservation Benefit of Circle Hooks for Striped Bass

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Circle hooks save fish, right?

That was the assumption when fishery managers created a rule in 2020 requiring anglers to use circle hooks when fishing with bait for striped bass. Some preliminary studies from the late 1990s suggested that circle hooks result in lower rates of gut hooking than regular J-hooks. However, those studies relied on an older scientific method that used cages to monitor survival for 2-3 days after fish were caught. Additionally, the style of circle hooks available today are quite different than were available 25 years ago.

For these reasons, our team of biologists conducted a study using modern circle hooks and modern scientific methods to measure the conservation benefit of the “striped bass circle hook rule”. Over two years, we caught 716 striped bass with J-hooks and three popular circle hooks models. Before releasing them, we tagged nearly half of these fish with electronic transmitters that measured tail beats. Using an array of receiver buoys, we remotely monitored their survival for two months.
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