SKATR JIM

Caspr- you are wrong. It is a federal law, issued by NMFS. The law is, if you are in the Atlantic Fishery, participating in a billfish tournament, you are required to use a circle hook on all natural baits. Stupid stupid law, but thats the way it is written. Feel free to use J-hooks any other time you go fishing.

I' m not surprised that an Alabama grad doesn't know how to use google. Here is the first thing I found when I googled it- http://www.marlinmag.com/news/news/n...ent-51873.html

Xanadu

There you go trying to look at the fishing regulations from a logical perspective. Of course, it wouldn't make sense to have special laws just for tournaments, but that's exactly what they've done. Worse yet, the data and framework they considered was for Sailfish tourneys in South Florida where they might be catching 25 sails per day all on live bait. Great rule for them, but stupid when you apply it to meat/lure combos for marlin fished with high drags, heavy leaders and for blues.

Feeding Frenzy

Don't forget most of the data they collected was from Costa Rica where they mainly live bait and bait and switch. Then the other data is from longline vessels duh. I would love to see the data on kill rates fishing J-Hooks trolling and high speed trolling versus circle hooks. MMMMMM:banghead. But then again Mississippi never follows federal law anyway. Aren't they still in the Confederacy?