Our standard Cox and Rawle Mutsu Circle hook is proving a firm favourite with anglers all over Europe. The Mutsu Circle offers you a finer gauge of wire compared to many other hook brands on the market, it also has an offset which gives you an even better hook-up rate.

Circle hooks are fastly growing in popularity with sea anglers all around Europe and the United Kingdom. A Circle was once seen as a hook generally used by anglers chasing big fish like shark and tuna. Circle hooks are now being utilised by sea anglers who participate in many of the different disciplines within our sport. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight some of the main advantages when using Circle hooks and give you my opinion on how best to use them.

Three key benefits of using a Mutsu Circle hook

• The main key benefit of using a Circle hook has to be better fish conservation. Most sea anglers these days want to practice a good catch and release policy. The Circle hook is designed to catch in the mouth of a fish which helps to prevent deeper and sometimes life threatening injuries to the gut or gills of a fish.
• Another key benefit is a good solid hook-hold. When a Circle hook is set properly in the fish’s mouth they rarely come back out.
• My final key benefit is you will cut down on tackle losses because of how the Circle hook is designed. The point of hook is angled at 90 degrees towards the shank of the hook, meaning it won’t as easily catch on the seabed.

Baiting a Mutsu Circle hook

Baiting up correctly is also a very important factor when successfully using a Circle hook. I believe that you should really be looking to get your bait to sit at the lowest point of the hook gape, next to the point of the Circle hook. Again, you need to consider how the Circle hook is designed to work and how you could restrict the movement of the hook when baiting up in a certain way.

Smaller baits can be hooked on quite simply and left to move freely on the hook.

Larger baits could be seen as more problematic because you are looking to fix the bait below a single hook. You may also have the additional problem of wanting to clip up these baits to a rig for casting – Don’t worry, I have a solution….

Use a Dingle Dangle 

The Dingle Dangle attaches to your hook and gives you something on which to fix your bait on below a single Circle hook. This idea originated in South Africa. Circle hooks have been widely used by anglers in South African fishing for many years; they have come up with this neat solution when casting bigger baits, especially those baits which need to be elasticated.

Adopted by the Brits, many of whom, like me, have visited South Africa for fishing at some point in time; the Dingle Dangle has now been utilised and adapted by us for fishing in the United Kingdom.

Now known to me as ‘The Dongle’

My device is simply a piece of wire crimped on to the gape of my Circle hook.

I found the stiffness of the wire keeps the bait very neat and straight for casting. I discovered that the crimps needed to be loose in order to allow movement of the bait up and down the hook shaft. This was extremely important because when a fish is hooked the bait needs to end up by the eye of the hook. This allows the entire hook to go fully into the fish’s mouth with no interruption from the bait.

Both the wire and crimps gave me a good solid base on which I could elasticate my bait. Once totally covered with bait the wire would not be detected by the fish and I found removing old baits very easy. The addition of a very small clip at the bottom of my dongle made it great for casting. Varying the size of my dongle allowed me to cast a whole host of different baits.

Top tip  

Utilise a baiting tool when whipping on softer baits to your dongle. This will make a potentially very fiddly job much easier and allow you to keep your baits straighter and more aerodynamic.

Ready tied rig 

Cox and Rawle are now working on supplying you with a ready-tied Circle hook pulley rig with a dongle attached. This rig will incorporate a clip at the bottom of the dongle which will attach to an impact release clip ready for casting. This dongle may also be adapted to work on multiple hooked clip down rigs in the future. 

There will always be different opinions on how to best use our products and if it works for you then great. Our recommendations on how to best use our products flow from the Cox and Rawle Pro Team who are out there fishing with our products on a regular basis.