A day in the Fitzroy

[Douglas]

Hey Al

I've had another look at that image of the busted Jackal lure.

That front treble split ring is a mangled egg model. My view is that they are hopeless on bigger fish. I'm not surprised that it opened up. Egg rings might allow the treble to hang further from the body but there's a price you pay (increased leverage at the potential break points).

The second thing is that treble has a scale pinned in the centre. The actual hook penetration into the fish was only as deep as the barb. There would have been enormous leverage on the front treble, the egg split ring and the lure anchor point. That treble sure wasn't going to fail so something else had to.

Thirdly, to pin a scale like that, the treble wasn't in the fish's mouth. It was on the outside near the head (maybe the cheek or top of the head judging by the small size of the scale). That's why the leverage stresses were increased.

The front treble on those lures is usually a wider gape to that the treble bends and points protrude further out from the profile of the lure. Then the lure body doesn't interfere with the effectiveness of hooking ability of the treble.

If the lure is sucked into the barra's mouth, then none of the above really matters as the leverage point is at the bib split ring.

But its when a treble is stuck on the outside of the mouth that the poor old lure is subjected to significant increases in leverage stresses.

Food for thought?

Anyway, thanks for putting that image up. I've learned a few things about reasons for wide gape trebles that don't apply to normal wide gape single hooks.