Organic Fish Hooks

[Last Mohican]

Beowulf, I read a good article on www.primitiveways.com about making a hook out of deer antler. You might want to check it out.

[canid]

noodling isn't my thing. gouges are great for passive fishing in that you actualy want the prey fish to completely swallow them. this is good for catfish for sure, as they will generaly just sit there untill you try to pull them up.

[Jay]

I have'nt used a rose thorn but have use other types of thorn and carved wooden hooks
had some success with both.
The wiedest thing I ever used as bait in a real life situation was a rolled up piece of bus ticket. (Ground was too dry and too hard to dig for worms and damp area of shoreline didnt have any worms.) caught a small 2" fish and then used it for bait. caught 8 thilapia.

[flandersander]

I made some this weekend and heres what I did. I took a thorn from my wifes plant. I then baked it on a pan for 5 mins at 345 dagrees farenhight. When it cooled (a few seconds) and find a small twig ( i used willow). then i cut a small slit for the thorn to go into. I cut the slit deeper at one end to make the thorn sit more point-facing-up-so-the-fish-gets-cought-on-it-better. I couldn't find any string or sinew so i super-glued it to the stick. I could have tied it but i couldn't find anything to tye it with. It works rather well but it floats so i need to use a rock or something on the line to weigh it down.

[ATough]

If you get a couple medium sized thorns, you can lash them together with some line, it makes a very effective hook.

[flandersander]

Oh you mean like a treble? I think i will have to try that. Thanks for the tip.

[flandersander]

I tried the treble thing but the thorns didn't seem to look like they could catch the mouth of a small fish. I think an O-ring at the bottom would point the thorns vertical enough. Any other ideas on thorn hooks?

[canid]

you don't want them to catch the mouth, you want them to be swallowed, as in a gouge. they catch on the softer tissues on the way to the stomache.

[flandersander]

Oh. That makes sense. Don't you think that the line would but off a fish? Do you think you could catch a larger fish such as pike by the soft stomach tissues?

[canid]

pike are notorious for shredding line [i use steel leaders as i do for shark and striper], but other fish do well. this is [in my experience] is best, as i've said for passive fishing, and is good for opportunistic feeders, many of which are less than discriminant.

[flandersander]

So like a walleye or bluegill or something. I cought a pike today and it nicked the line in several places.

[canid]

i don't have much exsperience with walleye, but don't they have lots of small sharp teeth aswell? if you don't have trouble with them biting through monofiliment then it's worth the try. don't they feed agressively through ice?

[tfisher]

Thin bones work well for gorges like chicken bones, bird bones, etc. they are strong thin and hollow.

[flandersander]

i don't have much exsperience with walleye, but don't they have lots of small sharp teeth aswell? if you don't have trouble with them biting through monofiliment then it's worth the try. don't they feed agressively through ice?

Yeah they have small teeth but we don't use leaders when fishing for them. They are smarter than pike, they don't try to swallow a hook, they just go for the bait and when they realize there is a sharp hook inside, they try to spit it out. A pike will chomp down and try to swallow the hook, even if there is a hook inside.

[canid]

pike fishing i know, from my time in Mi. the lake i lived on had been nearly fished out of walleye, so i never caught one.

[flandersander]

yeah that can happen

[flandersander]

What other homemade hook could I use for pike? Pike really strike anything but i want something i just don't attatch hooks on. I want something that i can make and catch a jack or pike for you american folks, on. Like a bone hook, but something i can get anytime. Does anybody know of anything like that?

[flandersander]

or something that i could make to catch walleye on?

[flandersander]

Has anybody actually had any success on any of these things? i mean its good to know of them but in a survival situation, i want something that i know works. something i can catch perch on? walleye? pike?

[canid]

of course they work they either are, or are an extension of the fishing techiques that invented the practice of fishing, they're just not as reliable as commercial tackle. in the spirit of trapping; this is why i recommend such things as the thorn gouges for passive fishing, such as staked lines, etc.

according to ray mears, poor people in the london area still used such a method with hawthorn gouges allong the thames delta into the 20th century.

so; i would say that it comes more to the techniques ued than to the viability of the materials. as for gouges, if it is small enough to be swallowed, strong enough to support the weight of and sharp enough to puncture the internal soft tissues of the species being fished for, is properly baited and the fish being target are prone to taking such bait and swallowing, the principle is unarguably sound. it comes down to how the method is used.

if you could find or make:

20 or so feet of somewhat stout line,
several 1-3' lengths of fie line,
several gouges such as the thorn gouge i made for illustration
and the bait;

you could in waters where opportunistic fish feed stake out the stout line, with the baited hooks on their fine line attatched at regular intervals and leave this unattended all day long, or over night. the measure of success would be the fish on the line [or absent therefrom].