Go Barbless or Stick With Barbed Hooks?

One of the most common questions we’ll hear when we have anglers on the water is “Did you just pinch the barb on the hook?” We’re always a little bit startled because most of the time there’s a bit of an accusing tone as if we don’t want them to actually catch a fish, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Fishing with barbless hooks seems to have an aura about it where the perception is of a fly fisher who cares very little about catching a fish and generally expects every fish to come loose before being landed. We fish exclusively with either barbless hooks or hooks that we have crushed the barb and there are several good reasons.

A solid Clinch River rainbow trout landed on a small barbless Zebra Midge

The first reason we prefer barbless hooks is because we’re constantly in proximity to flies zipping through the air. You can only imagine how likely it is to eventually have a hook find us. We’re actually accustomed to the idea and are paying attention, watching for it. It’s more common for a second angler to get hooked since they’re usually paying more attention to a pretty scene around them or an osprey flying overhead. Hooks come out of your shirt or jacket far easier if they don’t have a barb. You can only imagine how much easier it comes out of your arm or, God forbid, your face if there’s not a barb.

When it comes to hooking fish, things aren’t nearly so obvious as you’d think. The general perception is that a barbed hook is superior to barbless when it comes to hooking fish and keeping them on. Something we often have to explain to some anglers is the process by which fish are hooked. Occasionally someone will miss several fish in a row and complain that the barbless hook is preventing them from getting a good hook up. The truth of the matter is that the trout usually spits the fly before the angler came tight to set the hook. A fish is not hooked just because it takes the fly in its mouth.

A barbless Z-lon Nymph in a nice Smoky Mountain brown trout’s jaw

I’ll often illustrate this concept by holding the fly, checking it thoroughly, handing it to the angler and ask them to check if the hook point is sharp. After that I might even put the fly in my mouth, then spit it out. The fly was clearly in their hand and even in my mouth, but neither of us was hooked. It’s the hook set that hooks a fish, not the hook alone.

Barbless hooks can easily blamed for hooked fish coming off, but some experiments and observances lead me to question this. Many years ago I would intentionally fish all day long with barbed hooks. I kept track of how many trout came off and how many were landed. I did the same thing on another day with barbless hooks. This was something I did all season long in the Smokies and on our large tailwater rivers. The surprising result was that the percentage of trout that came off was very similar.

My experience in fishing saltwater leads us to believe that barbed hooks probably don’t hook up quite so well as barbless hooks. Every saltwater fly fishing guide we’ve ever been with insists on barbless hooks because they penetrate better than those with barbs. A tarpon’s mouth is exceptionally hard and a clean, barbless hook penetrates better than one with a barb that often stops short.

The various parts of a fish’s mouth are softer or tougher and any hook will have deeper or shallower penetration depending upon where it sticks. If your hook finds the corner of a fish’s jaw there is very little chance it will come out without your hemostats to pull it out. If your hook completely hooks soft tissue in the roof of a trout’s mouth, the hook can tear out if you play the fish too hard. In this instance there’s no difference between a barbless or barbed hook. Both hooked the fish but the hook pulled out.

A solid brown trout hooked with a streamer

For several years I took one particular fly fisher on numerous floats to target large trout with streamers. He was an extremely skilled fly tyer and always brought boxes full of gorgeous streamers. Because the flies are extra long and the fish were large as well he preferred articulated flies tied with two hooks. This style of fishing is low on the quantity of fish hooked but extra high when it comes to quality. This particular angler rarely hooked anything less than 16″ and landed fish up to 26″ with me, but only rarely put more than a very few fish in the net on any day. Because of the few fish hooked and the exceptionally large size it was particularly heart breaking whenever a fish came off.

Over the years this fly fisher went from fishing single hook streamers to articulated, double hook streamers. After a while he even went to adding a small treble hook to the head of on particularly large streamer pattern since so many fish grabbed the fly at the head, perhaps causing fewer good hook ups than when the fish took the fly closer to one of the hooks. I used to laugh and tell him that fly had more hooks than Bill Dance’s tackle box!

This was something of particular interest to me since this was a rather extreme fly, but one I got to observe on several occasions. What surprised me more than anything is that fish came unhooked from this fly just as frequently as anything else. And trust me… As the guy who reached into the net to pick up a thrashing fish with hooks going in every direction, those hooks were plenty sharp and the barbs were NOT crimped.

In the end I always recommend barbless hooks, but never get upset with folks who prefer barbs. In our experience barbless hooks are easier on both fish and anglers. In our experience barbed hooks don’t seem to land any more fish, just more snags in our shirts and jackets.