August 30, 2019 at 11:30 am
By Fisheries Biologist Dave Howatt
Recently I was contacted by an angler inquiring about adding barbless hook restrictions to a cluster of waters in the Rangeley Lakes area with wild fisheries for brook trout and landlocked salmon. MDIFW is very interested in protecting both of these species, especially wild populations, so I decided to dig a little deeper into the subject.
In Maine, barbless hook restrictions only exist on three waters. These waters in western Maine are very heavily fished and have low populations of high-quality brook trout. In 2005, the restriction was added to the Rapid River and Pond in the River in Oxford County when illegally introduced smallmouth bass became established and threatened the highly prized brook trout fishery for which the area is famous. At the time, every conceivable measure was being taken to protect the trout. The lower section of the Magalloway River, below the Aziscohos Lake Dam, also has a barbless hook restriction. This was put in place in 2010 to conform with the regulation already in place on the river in New Hampshire. This section of water has a low population of quality brook trout too. Currently, all three waters with this special regulation have stable salmonid populations.
After looking at the scientific literature, I found that studies conducted on trout as far back as 1932, show mixed results as to the benefits of barbless hooks for the survival of released fish. However, the differences are very small. In fact, the combined data from the studies in the graph below, conducted mainly on cutthroat trout populations and using only flies as gear, show 1.4% mortality with barbed hooks and 1.7% mortality with barbless hooks. This is an insignificant 0.3% difference.
Barbless hooks do have some advantages, such as allowing for quicker fish releases, and hooks without barbs are much easier to extract from unfortunate anglers that snag themselves!
Overall, studies show that regulations prohibiting barbed hooks offer very little biological benefits to fish populations. Therefore, the likelihood of adding more mandatory barbless only waters in Maine is low.
But remember, anglers always have the option to exercise their own personal preference and fish barbless if they choose. There are certainly perspectives on both sides of this topic, and I hope this information will be educational to both advocates and critics of barbless hooks.