Thundercat wrote in
:

On 16 Mar 2005 15:30:16 GMT, Scott Seidman
wrote:

It calls
for more handling of the fish than using hooks that have already been
debarbed.

If you used the D-Barb tool on the hooks prior to fishing, you simply
wouldn't catch any. It cuts the whole tip off. But you already knew
that because you checked out the site. Although I am sure you can
understand why I might think otherwise based on your insightful
comments above. Just removing the barb from the hook would be an
altogether different discussion that has nothing to do with the D-Barb
tool. Knowing the above, the rest of the discussion is moot IMO.

lmb2xesad
Harry J aka Thundercat
Brooklyn Bill's Tackle Shop Fishing Team
http://www.brooklynbillstackleshop.com
Share the knowledge, compete on execution.

Man, you're hard to talk to. First, there are plenty of ways to debarb
hooks other than this tool. Most people who debarb either use barbless
hooks, or just use a needlenose without serrations to pinch the barb over.
I never would have thought to go out and buy a $20 tool to pinch off a
barb.

Next, on the d-barb homepage, the two cartoon hooks drawn on the page show
hooks with tips intact, but with the pointy part of the barb missing.
Perhaps this gave me the impression that the tool could remove barbs
without removing tips, but I still wouldn't use it to debarb a hook before
its buried in the fish. I think I've seen some other photos or drawings
like this on their page, but it's a nasty page to navigate-- their web-
designer, burnette solutions, must be one of the last professional web
group in the world to still use frames, and the media player version of the
movie wouldn't download--but that really is moot.

I've had two polite replies from people who have obviously managed to pick
up on the point I've been making (but the next time I land a 22" trout on a
size 18 barbless hook with a 5x tippet, I'll chuckle about Jerry's "hunting
without bullets" comment--BTW, Jerry, if you're ever in western NY, drop me
a line, and maybe we can get one of those monsters on the end of your
line). Silly me, I thought that I could talk about C&R mortality in a
thread started by someone who is trying to spread a product that decreases
C&R mortality.

If you're still having trouble deciding whether or not my original reply
was on topic, I'll spell it out for you. Look at what I replied to
originally. Joe was talking about the testimonials. One paragraph in those
testimonials read:
"This fish had really swallowed the hook with only the last half inch or so
visable. It was bleeding and I felt the best I could do was to reach down
as far as possible (quite easy with the D-Barb)(sic) and just snip off the
hook. Of course I don't know what the long term effect on the fish will be
but I felt that I would have had a hard time cutting the hook as closely as
I did with diagonal cutters, especially as deep as it was."

If that angler had been using barbless hooks in the first place, that fish
wouldn't have swam away with a hook in it.

If you still can't follow, here it is (limiting myself to two syllable
words): Jerry nicely posted that using this tool saves fish. My reply was
that fishing with barbless hooks in the first place would save even more
fish. I'm afraid I can't get much simpler-- my keyboard has keys, not
crayons.

As a last point, to consider, I've read about some fly fishermen who cut
off their points, as the ultimate in C&R fishing. In fact, one company
used to sell a Touch And Go hook, with an eye where the point would be, to
decrease the chance that a fish could be injured by a hook with the point
cut off. Of course, this makes absolutely no sense to do for bass fishing
(and I wouldn't even suggest it--but point this out to show that there are
people that fish with no points), but it can be pretty exciting for dry fly
fishing.

Scott