J hooks or circle hooks?

[drag4striper]

My thoughts on this common question. I fish by myself 90% of the time and my girlfriend is with me the other 10%. Although she does a good job helping me watch the boards and floats most of the time.
I catch her day dreaming some. Ha ... So i had just used circle hooks because it is hard for me to keep an eye on everything.
Circles have worked great on floats and down and free lines.
Now circles on boards are a different story.
I have found for me that if the fish are really taking the bait good circle hooks work well, but when they seem to play around a bit they don't hook up as good. Lots of boards pulled back with no meat.
Just my thoughts.....
I normally run 7 or 8 rods because my boat is only 17 .5'.
I have determined that if I run
J hooks on my bank side boards and circles hooks on everything else, that this works best for me.
Because I really only need to watch the bank side boards close so I can set the J hooks when I get action.
And I just listen for the clickers screaming on the other rods.
If anyone has a better suggestion please let me know.
I am new to bait fishing, so it's been a learning experience for me.

[Pete D.]

I try to use circles on downlines only. I use J hooks on boards and free lines.

I also lock the bails when I fish. Granted, I am mainly on Anna, but I have a pretty low hookup ratio on boards. Maybe setting the clickers on em is the way to go. But those flimsy ugly stick striper rods seem to have enough play to let em run a bit, and sturdy enough backbone to set the hook.