A Primer on Set Hooks and Trotlines - Part Two
by Keith A. Williams
Jug hooks are just short set hooks which have been tied to floating plastic bottles or jugs. These can also be effective, but I prefer not to use them as you have to float along with them and I dislike having to keep track of many non-biodegradable objects that have been dumped into the water. They also have a nasty habit of getting all tangled up on snags as they work their way downstream.
Set hooks are generally simple in construction. You need a strong cord, lead egg sinker, and a suitable hook. The sinker is necessary in current or your bait will be constantly floating on the surface and be much less effective. I like to attach my sinker about twelve inches up from the hook to keep it near the bottom.
There are two schools of thought for length. One method employs putting live bait, just at or below the water’s surface so that it can move and splash around a bit and the other is to set the bait near the bottom. Up here where I now reside, they have this choice easier for me, as it is illegal to use live bait for these methods. With a little bit of imagination, though- this no longer posed a problem. My original lines were only eight feet long and in order to get them near the bottom of even the small creek near my house, I attached two foot leaders to them to act as extensions. Recently constructed models have been in eleven foot lengths to eliminate this problem. To hang them shorter, you can either tie them higher, or just leave more cord on your tag end when tying them off.
On to PART THREE
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