Barbless Fishing Tackle for Wilderness Canoe Trips - a whole bunch of reasons why going barbless makes sense!
Here's a notion about fishing that many don't even remotely begin to consider before they pack their Duluth Packs and head out into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area: What happens if you get a hook in you or somebody else in your group?
There's nothing like the shear exhilaration and thrill of sticking a big old regular treble hook through your thumb with a 5 pound, scrappy northern pike is flopping around on the other side of the treble. If you are a goth, pieced, freak having a hook in your thumb while way out in woods is a probably still a wonderful thing. There's nothing more satisfying than that sharp searing pain that shoots up to your shoulder everytime you so much as blink with that hook in your thumb. And, pushing that big, slightly dull barb through the fat part of your thumb so you can snip the barb off makes you feel like a man even if your a women (or maybe vice versa). It's especially poignant when the hook is in your earlobe or eyebrow.
Sounds like I'm making this stuff up, eh? After my entire life of working at the family resort while guiding and outfitting, I've seen a lot. From hooks in a wife's derriere to a pierced earlobe on a Kentucky guy, to a Rapala hanging from a an Iowa lady's eyebrow. That's only part of it. We've had many canoe trips come out early for mainly four reasons that go in this order:
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1. Fish hooks embedded in people, but not in fish.
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2. Slipping on rocks because who'd ever think the rocks would be slippery in the wilderness?????
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3. Unqualified idiots with axes - If you never do, but believe you can anyway, you're already in deep trouble.
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4. Dumb college kids (et al) with whitewater rapids - Whitewater war cry - "Oh, what the heck, let's go for it!"
Fortunately, numbers 3 & 4 are more infrequent occurences but I can think of several real beauties just within our many years of provding outfitting services. With acknowledgements to the fact that there are a LOT of strange people out there, just imagine all the "adventures" of so many other goofballs who shouldn't be playing farther than one city block from any emergency room. It's a little scary.
That brings me to the topic of this article: Going barbless
Gamakatsu Barbless Treble Hooks are designed to hook easily and hold.
In the Quetico Park (see our other related site called QueticoFishing.com), the Canadians are requiring mandatory use of barbless hooks plus a bunch of other stuff as well. Surprisingly, and unlike the Canadians who constantly attempt to legislate public safety, the barbless hook requirement is actually for the fish, not people. When practising "catch and release", barbless hooks supposedly do less damage. Barbless single hooks and barbless treble hooks DO make unhooking the fish much easier but for the purposes of wilderness camping, they really come out of human hides easier than barbed hooks. That in itself is a really great reason for having barbless hooks and I'm surprised that isn't written into Canadian legislation somewhere. So, if you have clumsy friends and/or a bumbling 10 year old, or if you haven't been able to grasp the concept of casting perpendicularly to the canoe when sitting in the front seat, barbless is the only way to go. For the rest of us, it's pretty handy, too.
On that note, Red Rock has come up with a line of really affordable barbless tackle that will do wonders for you on both sides of the invisible boundary line separating us from them. Below are lures already put together with barbless treble hooks. Remember to use shine silver for clear lakes or bright days and darker lures (gold, brass, monkey puke) for darker water or overcast days. Bright colors seem to work well later in the summer - mid-june thru the end of August.
All of our barbless tackle is very inexpensive relative to mainstream, name brand tackle. The hooks you see with the little squiggle in the times are called Red Rock Liplockers. They are designed to act like a barbed hook.
Hook up with a Liplocker, Gamakatsu, or VMC barbless treble hooks here
© Red Rock Wilderness Store
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