Circle or Octopus Hooks and BFS

[TroutMcghee]

Does anyone have any experience using circle or octopus hooks and finesse fishing. I do a fairly large amount of small stream/river fishing for redeye’s, Bartrams and other smaller bass species. Have been thinking about rigging a few patterns, jigs, or even tying some weighted flies to use with my baitcasting setup in places where the fly rod doesn’t like to go very easily. Wondering if anyone has done something similar to find out some of the do’s and don’ts of the systems.

Thanks in advance for any advice or pointing me in the right direction. Tried the search function but it gave the “too generic” results.

Trout!

[CM_Stewart]

I have tied some conehead buggers for use with a BFS setup. They'll work, but to get them heavy enough to cast easily, they will be hard to keep off the bottom. If your streams have rocky bottoms you'll lose a lot of them

Personally I wouldn't use circle hooks unless I was fishing with bait.

[Houndfish]

I am trying to use small circle hooks to wacky rig 3-4" trout worms. The idea is to have a downstream drifting option in addition to the upstream/quartering spoons and spinners. I wade a lot of spots with substantial numbers of logjams and drifting spoons under them is an expensive game. Still trying to work out if I prefer to rig it with a DS weight under the lure or a float above it.

In still water small circle hooks work very well for the tiny wacky worms, it lets me get good hooksets with a soft rod and gives some hook-swallowing protection if a larger bass grabs the tiny presentation.

[Allsorts]

Have a look at https://crazyfish.com.ua/, a Ukrainian business that has a wide range of small SPs and more importantly a weedless rigging system (Texas style) with hooks down to #10. The rig marked 'B' uses a 'cheburashka', an Eastern European jig head system which allows one weight to be used with any number of hooks. The wire loop slides out and you can change out the hooks. Just be aware, if using a cheburashka around bass or trout, put a biggish gummy stopper over the knot to prevent the weight being thrown up the line and away from the wire on a jump.

[TroutMcghee]

I have been experimenting with some circle hooks rigged Texas weedless style using the small Z-man TRD craws. Primarily using this style of hook with a UL rod bass and river fishing and have increased my hook up percentages dramatically since I have started doing this. Typically the rod didn’t have quite the backbone in some cases to properly set a hook imbedded in the lure. I have the point of the circle hook almost penetrating the plastic and just have to come tight with the fish to set the hook. Will be experimenting more as the summer progresses.