Setting the Hook

I showed up early one night to pick my boys up from an adult education class on bass fishing and I got in on some instruction that amazed me. My boys were learning to set the hook on a fish. I never really thought about the physics involved, and I so I sat and watched my boys learning to set the hook. I learned a lot - perhaps you will as well. He happened to have my youngest son at the front of the class holding a bass rod and reel. At the back of the class was another student, a man, holding a piece of ordinary cardboard. The instructor had gently place the point of the hook on the top of the cardboard and then told my son to set the hook. He did what I thought was a pretty good hook set.

Amazingly, the hook barely penetrated the cardboard. The barb of the hook was not even close to being engaged! He had my son set the hook several times, and each time the point of the hook barely penetrated. This, he said, is why lots of people loose fish. He had my attention!

My older son took the rod, having learned a bit from his brother’s efforts, and he began setting hooks into cardboard. He did a little better, but still did not properly hook up to the cardboard.

Then the instructor took the rod and began explaining a few things. They were things I inherently knew to be true, but that I had never put together to understand the mechanics of setting a hook. Line stretches. Some line stretches more than others, but stretching is a simple fact. With perhaps the exception of some of the woven Dacron lines or “Spiderwire” type lines, they all stretch. Rod tips bend and give. Again, some give more than others, but they all give. A fast taper rod, one that has a heavy backbone and an extremely flexible tip, is particularly susceptible to poor hook sets if not used properly. Hooks are generally dull. They may seem sharp to you, but unless you have just sharpened them, they are in fact dull. And finally, fish mouths are harder inside than you think. There are a few species that have what we term paper mouths (the seatrout family is an example); but, most fish mouths have a hard, bony interior. They have to! Fish eat other fish, and the fins from eaten fish will stick and poke the inside of the mouth of the eating fish. Their mouths are built to deflect and fend off those fin sticks. Think about it: a fishhook is no different than an eaten fish’s fins inside an eating fish’s mouth. (Someone remind PETA of that when they claim that fish feel pain!)Given the line stretch (the longer the line between rod tip and hook, the more the stretch), the relative bending capacity of the rod to absorb the shock of a hook set, and the type of hook, there are an almost infinite number of variables that can be applied to determine the pressure required to bury the barb of a hook in the fish’s mouth. Unless you are fishing with extremely light tackle and line for very small fish, there is no such thing as setting the hook too hard. The drag on the reel (assuming it is properly set), and the ability of the rod to absorb the shock prevents the line from breaking. You can not set the hook too hard in most cases!The instructor went to the front of the room and was able to totally penetrate the cardboard with his hook set. He really came back hard with the rod with a quick set. Slow hook sets simply do not work, and most people are afraid to really set a hook. That was his simple story, proven to all of us in that room.To this day, my boys know how to set a hook and their bite-to-catch ratio is probably higher than mine. I know that with today’s circle hooks, a hook set is almost unnecessary. But not everyone fishes with circle hooks. I also know that someone will read this and end up breaking a rod because the reel drag was set wrong. I will tell you this, however. I have never been able to break a properly set up rod or line while setting a hook, regardless of how hard I tried. My opinion is that in most cases, you can’t set the hook hard enough! There is no too hard!

Beginner Dolphin Trolling

Owning a boat, maybe for the first time, and deciding to head offshore, maybe for the first time, a number of readers ask about getting into dolphin fishing. That’s dolphin fish, mahi mahi, not dolphin porpoise! I have answered some specifics, but now it is time to lay out some basics on fishing for these prolific, blue water acrobats. The first thing to remember is that dolphin, for the most part, are found in blue water. Along the southern Atlantic coast, that usually means the Gulfstream. For all but Florida anglers, that means a small boat is out of luck. The Gulfstream begins moving away from the North American continent around the northern part of Florida. From Jacksonville, the run to the stream is sometimes 80 miles.

But, because the stream meanders in and out, and sometimes warm water currents off the stream can move close, dolphin can be found as close in as ten miles during the summer months. There won’t be a lot of them, but they can be caught. You just need to pay attention to the fishing reports.

In South Florida and the Florida Keys, the stream runs from three to five miles off the beach, and I have actually caught dolphin over the edge of the reef in forty feet of water or less. Again, it isn’t the norm, but it does happen.

So, take account of where you are and plan accordingly.

Watch and read the fishing reports in your area and see when and where the dolphin are being caught. Dolphin can be caught year round, but in general, the hot season is from about April all the way through to the first cold weather.

Dolphin will stay in the warm waters of the Gulfstream when the surrounding water is cold. So, winter time means getting right in the stream to fish. In warm and hot weather, the waters surrounding the stream heat up and dolphin will wander in closer to the reef in search of food.

Dolphin are voracious eaters. They are virtual feeding machines. Although I have had some days when I could not get a school that was swimming under my boat to bite, in general, they live to eat. The lifespan of a dolphin is only five years, and in that time they reach weights of fifty pounds or more.

As far as a favorite food, the flying fish has to be close to the top of the list. Great schools of flying fish will leap into the air, gliding the wind currents for several hundred yards to escape a predator fish. They are all over the Gulfstream, and dolphin, among other fish, love them.

Dolphin also feed on ballyhoo, another baitfish common in the area, and on the small fish and crustaceans that live in and around floating Sargasso weed. This weed comes into the Gulfstream from the great Sargasso Sea, a sea within a sea, in the tropical Atlantic. It is home to a variety of sea life, and Dolphin will usually be found patrolling an area of weeds.

The Sargasso weeds are free floating. They provide not only food, but shade from the sun (yes, fish need to stay out of the sun just like us!). The weeds tend to be found in long lines that have been formed by current wave action. Some of these weed lines can be a hundred yards wide and stretch for several miles. Others are a few yards wide and only a hundred yards long. Whatever the size, remember that dolphin like them and feed under them.

Dolphin fishing is more fun on light tackle. By light, I mean no bigger than thirty pound IGFA class tackle. I actually prefer twenty pound tackle, because the vast majority of dolphin you will catch are under twenty pounds. The occasional big bull dolphin can still be caught on this light tackle; you will simply have to run him down and fight him!

Conventional trolling rods and reels work well, but medium to heavy spinning tackle will work equally as well. Just make sure the reel holds several hundred yards of line.

I use twenty to thirty pound test monofilament line on my dolphin reels. But, remember, I am specifically targeting dolphin. Charter boats will usually be trolling fifty or even eighty pound line. The beauty of trolling the Gulfstream is that you never know what you will find. So, charter boats – wanting to make sure their paying customers don’t miss a big tuna or wahoo because the line is too light – will use the heavier tackle.