March Meeting 2017 Recap

March Meeting:

There was an excellent turnout for the March Meeting.  It appears that this whole “Circle” hook movement is moving in the right direction.  When you look at the conservation movement, the “catch and release is a natural extension.  The circle hook is known has a humanitarian way of using bait to catch fish without have the hook lodged so far down into the fishes stomach that extraction is life threatening.  A circle hook has the barb pointed perpendicular to the shank of the hook.  This allows the hook to be pulled out of the stomach, up through the gullet and finally into the mouth.  At the POINT, the hook starts to make the sharp turn around the jaw and that is where the math genius occurs.  This perpendicular point now catches on the jaw as it makes the tight turn – and voilà – tight line!

So how does this work for fly fishing you might ask.  Well, during the March meeting, yours truly, provided some insight into how a fly fisherman can use this technique to increase her/his catch.  This circle hook provides an advantage to the nymph fisherman in the form of an increase time to set the hook – or let the fish set the hook.  

For those of you that followers of the Czech nymphing (or French, Spanish, Greek or Jamaican – not during bobsled season), the upstream cast with a downstream drift provides the required mechanics to set the hook without even knowing it!!!

The key to the circle hook is a slow tightening of the line until one feels the fish, tighten the line and the hook is set.  You do not have to do one of those 5X tippet breaking hook sets that, if not successful, ends up with all those other flies in the tree just overhead.  The current is your friend.  This “Friend” actually sets the hook.  It goes like this:

1.    You cast upstream
2.    The fly starts to move with the current (you need to keep your rod tip downstream of the fly).
3.    The fish takes the fly into its mouth.
4.    The line continues downstream, and the line starts to tighten with the hook still in the mouth of the fish.
5.    The hook starts to be drawn out of the fish’s mouth in a slow and steady motion.
6.    Until, the point (at 90 degrees to the shank) makes the tight turn around the mouth and imbeds itself
7.    Fish ON!
8.    You wake up, feel the tight line, and thank yourself for either going to the March CMTU meeting or for reading this newsletter.

But there is more.  About the smallest circle hook you can find is a #14 at the Cabela’s right up the street.  But there is a way to make a circle hook right down to a #28!  However, if you did not make the meeting, you are stuck on a #14.  However, if you attend the Cold Water, Cold Beer event (if you are under 21 please email centralmasstu@gmail.com).  We will have a demonstration on how to do what is currently a CMTU secret!   Eventually this will be on Shark Tank or at the next Super Bowl Half Time when the Patriots are playing who cares – now this will be real entertainment.