Photo courtesy of Casey Lund, Lowman School. This fall Idaho Fish and Game Commission adopts fishing regulations for Idaho waters, which they do every two years. Most of the rules stay the same, and most of the changes are not very controversial. Idaho Fish and Game has proposed to do away with the requirement for barbless hooks on many of Idaho's quality fishing waters. The same proposal was rejected by the Commission 2 years ago, after several fishing groups stressed the need to maintain the rule.
Studies apparently come down on both sides of the issue.
A 1992 article concluded that barbless hooks caused less average trout mortality than hooks with barbs, for flies, artificial lures and bait. Both conclusions are built from a foundation of hooking mortality studies which have small sample sizes, which limit the ability to distinguish differences. Meanwhile, these studies never considered trout mortality based on how much time a fish is removed from water, since it takes more time to remove a barbed hook than barbless, especially for those less experienced anglers. Also left unstudied are other biological impacts, such as sublethal effects on growth and productivity of fish that are handled for longer periods and squeezed tighter when that barb is deeply imbedded. When the issue is simply hooking mortality applied to managing entire fish populations, the marginal differences between barbless and barbed hooks are much lower than, for example, bait v. no bait.