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Hooking the Wild Shiner

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Hooking the Wild Shiner

Fishing Great Hugh Crumpler discusses four ways an angler should use when hooking a wild shiner in "Hooking the Wild Shiner".

Hooking the Wild Shiner

There are four ways to hook a wild shiner. Each way has advantages and disadvantages, but each way has a reason. The four locations for hooking the wild shiner are through the lips, below the dorsal fin, above the anal fin and in the tail.

The most common and most widely used hooking procedure is to hook the wild shiner through the lips. Done correctly the point of the hook goes through the lower lip and comes out one of the two air holes in the top of the head of the wild shiner. The placement of the hook through the air hole gives more substance for the hook hold and stays in place better. Bass eat shiners head first so lip hooking increases hook set ratio. Fishing line has tension or pull. With the hook in the lips, the wild shiner tends to swim back to the boat. (The line tension causes the wild shiner to face the angler. The shiner swims the way he faces.) Lip hooking reduces swimming action of the bait and the bait tends to stay in one place. Sometimes you want the shiner to stay put and sometimes you want him to move. How you hook him makes a difference.

A sub category of lip hooking the wild shiner in the lips is hooking the wild shiner in the head. Basically, the hook is placed through the meaty part of the bait just behind the two air holes. You get the advantages of lip hooking, a more solid positioning of the hook, and a little more action out of the bait.

To hook the wild shiner under the dorsal fin run the hook through the meat in the back of wild shiner just below the dorsal fin. The exact placement of the hook is only important in that the angler should be able to rip the hook through the shiner when he sets the hook. A shiner will face away from the angler when hooked this way. The shiner will tend to swim more. When tension is placed on the line the shiner will come to the top and make splashes. Sometimes the splashing is enough to get a curious bass to strike. The splashing also draws attention. When splashing, the wild shiner looks like a bait trying to escape a bass. An angler can cause a wild shiner to swim UNDER cover when hooked this way. Bass eat wild shiners head first, so hook set to hook up ratio is reduced. The wild shiner tends to come up to the surface when hooked this way. Sometimes the difference in getting a bass to strike or not is based on whether the shiner swims or not.

Hooking the wild shiner above the anal fin is used when you need the shiner to swim under a mat to produce a bite. The idea is that with the hook on the bottom of the shiner the hook is less likely to get stuck in the mat. Basically, this is the same as hooking the wild shiner under the dorsal fin. The major difference is that the hooks easily can be pulled out of the shiner when it is placed above the anal fin. By pulling the rod tip down while the shiner is under the mat the shiner is pulled out of the bottom of the mat and when the rod tip is given to the shiner the shiner will swim further under the mat. Lifting the rod tip up or to the side will cause the shiner to dig deeper into the bottom of the mat. Many, many times the difference in getting a bite or getting that MONSTER bite is based on the location of the shiner. On the edge of the mat or swimming under it can be a vital difference.

Tail hooking has the distinct advantage of getting the shiner to swim. And it has the distinct disadvantage of greatly reduced hook up success.

When to use each hook placement method is based on what the bass are doing, how the angler is trying to catch them, the quality of the bait, and what other fish in the area are doing. For example, if needle fish or gar are in the area the shiners should not be near the surface as the needle fish and gar will wound or kill the bait.

Hugh Crumpler