The effectiveness of bite-shortened hooks for reducing handling time and injury of small-bodied freshwater fish captured by recreational anglers

Abstract

Modified bite-shortened hooks show promise for enabling easy handling and rapid release of fish captured by recreational anglers, with the potential to reduce injury and stress of released fish. This study investigated whether bite-shortened modified hooks were effective at improving fish welfare relative to more traditional hook configurations. We evaluated how hook type (jigs vs. Aberdeen), hook length (regular, shortened by 4 mm or shortened by 6 mm), and the presence or absence of a barb influenced the landing rates, handling time, hooking depth, ease of hook removal, and injury of Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus). There was significantly more fish landed using jig style (87.7%) than Aberdeen hooks (80.5%). The landing rates varied significantly among hook configurations with standard barbed hooks having the highest landing success (96%) and very bite-shortened hooks having the lowest (67%) landing success. Once landed, self-release (i.e., unhooked without use of hands) was most common for fish caught on very bite-shortened (shortened by 6 mm), followed by short bite-shortened (shortened by 4 mm), and then regular barbless hooks (hook not modified), while regular barbed hooks had the lowest self-release rate. Very short bite-shortened and short bite-shortened barbless hook configurations resulted in shallower hook depths and were less likely to cause injury compared to barbed and barbless regular length hooks. This research suggests that bite shortened barbless hooks allow for easy and rapid self-release while retaining reasonably high rates of landing success, suggesting that bite-shortened hooks could be a useful management tool for recreational fisheries.