Howsit guys its Glanville here i have just got back from the last Bugatti reef charter which was pretty Awesome the amount of giant Gts we saw this trip has been the best by far, anyways i'm replying to a querie from Brock about Shout Kudaku nand Jobus Straightening, we did straighten quite a few Shouts this trip and only the one Jobu.
We are fishing all of our poppers with a single assist on the head and a single tail hook, it is definitely the way forward when the Gts are feeding properly the hook up rate is un believably better, the reason the hooks are opening up is because whilst fighting the Gt that has been hooked on the assist off the head the point of the dragging tail hook of the popper jags the fish in the side of the body and as only the tip of the hook penetrates it puts alot of leverage on the gape of the hook and as the gt shakes its head or just swims the arc and immense strength of the fish straightens up the hook. This will straighten up any hook and there is not any hook that we have fished with on charter that we havn't opened at some stage. The hook i probably trust the most is a 9/0 Jobu they are super strong, we have wired 40kg Gts of the duckboards on the mothereship with 600lb leader and heavy tackle Marlin gloves practicing for the Cairns heavy tackle marlin season and not opened any doing that and within my guiding experience have only ever seen 3 open up and all the times it was influenced by the dragging tail hook.
I have become that confident with the single assist off the head for Gt fishing that when i personally fish for Gts i will use just a single 9/0 Jobu assist off the head and thats it, once that fish is hooked up, its hooked properly in the scissor of the mouth and its not going any where but coming to the boat for a picture.
The last week of charter we had the Japanese guys fishing with us including Mr Mogi and Mr Konishi they were fishing with trebles and it just reassured my theory of the reason the hooks were straightening up, i had Mr Konishi fishing with me and he opened up 3 owner ST-76 5/0 trebles in 1 day and one of them was on a PE5 outfit and that particular fish was only 25kg and there is no possible way that any man can physically exert enough pressure with PE5 to open a ST-76 5/0 treble but you are way more likely to jag the fish in the side with the trailing hook during the fight as there are 3 points on a treble which increase the chances 3 times. Besides losing fish to straightened hooks the bigger problem in the scenario is damaging the fish, every fish you catch on a treble gets jagged by the trailing hook and the scars it makes on their bodies is terrible, it really got to me by the end of the trip and due to this reason i had a GT of 32 kg die as the trailing treble jagged the fish in the gills, that is only the second GT that i have ever seen die on my boat in my entire fishing carrer and its a terrible feeling.
