what's the deal with circle hooks

couple of questions:  

1.  the regs say something about not having to use circle hooks for salmon if you are trolling, but kayaks can't really 'troll' without a motor by reg definition.  so we have to use circle hooks whenever we fish for salmon even when trolling with a salmon killer?

2.  i read somewhere that you don't 'set' the hook when using circle hooks, you let the fish hook itself.  this sounds like BS to me, anybody know?  

Circle hooks have their point turning towards the eye of the hook. The technique is to put your reel in gear and wind in slowly w/ even pressure.
The hook will turn in the fishes mouth and as it swims away, will pull toward the corner. As soon as corner of the fishes mouth hits the gap, voila they're hooked.
If you try to set a circle hook, since the point is turned in, you're liable to just pull the hook right out as the cheek doesn't have time to fall in the gap.
Perfect for catch and release and salmon, since they have fragile mouths. For other fish, not as fun as you're not ripping into your rod to "set" the hook.

You can troll with barbless j hooks from the yak, I believe as long as the kayak is in motion (not drifting) you're good.  Setting the hook with a circle is a guaranteed miss, Stuart has a good description of what to do in his salmon tutorial.

The fishing rules don't say anything about what moves you trolling. They just say that current or wind are not trolling power. I've heard one warden say that they look for ripples from your bow, a small bow wave.

The rule that always gets me is the one that says you must always carry a net 18 inches and larger in the ocean. I carry one and it's a pain, but I don't see that many kayakers carrying them and I haven't heard of any tickets.

You're not allowed to gaff a salmon, so you either carry a net, or probably don't land the salmon.  I think DFG is fairly lax with kayaks, I've not heard of one being 'boarded' on the ocean, and close proximity to a wardens boat may cause enough of a hazard that they avoid it for liability issues.  They can see if you don't have a net from quite a distance, and with one fine already in the bag, they may decide to close in and see if there are more.

I find that with circle hooks you pretty much don't do anything when the fish hits, in fact they may work best with the rod in the holder and the drag set just a little heavier than needed to keep the line from going out.  The fish has to commit and actually swallow your bait to enable a hookup, so nibblers and short strikes will not get hooked.   Using J hooks gives you a shot at hooking up with every nibble, but it does commit you to use your paddle enough to justify that you're trolling.  Your rig had best look more like a trolling rig than a mooching rig as well, maybe use a release with a larger sinker or a diving plane, and a anchovy harness like an RSK or FBR rather than straight bait.

You can fish stationary with a bait-free jig and J hooks, so a gitzit or homeade tinsel jig may produce well straight jigging with the drift.  I personally believe that because of a salmon's speed in the water they can't rely on smell all that much.  Jigs like this used to be popular (tipped with live bait) but that kind of fishing was pretty much abandoned with the circle hooks rules.  If they'll bite a trolled krokadile or apex, they sure aught to bite an appropriate jig or soft plastic.

Are you SURE that you can use jigs, not trolled, with j-hooks?

Why don't people yo-yo more often then?  It is a very popular technique in the NW and works well with deep fish like the salmon have been lately.

I need to re-read (again!!) the regs, but it seemed to me before that you had to be trolling to get away from the circle hook rule.

MolBasser

Right on, MolBasser-

Jigging, (what we call it up here) or yo-yoing (SoCal term) works well, either out of a boat or from shore. (A healthy salmon in shallow water goes insane.) I always throw out the treble that usually comes with them, and replace it with a Gamakatsu siwash ( J-hook) Don't think a circle would work very well, but there's no way of knowing without trying it.

 Here's a link to my favorite jig (iron); the three at the bottom have a fantastic holographic finish.

http://www.buzzbombzzinger.com/zzinger.html

 I've been loking forward to trying NW techniques on your Cal. salmon, but maybe someone brave will want to try it before I get down there. ( I'm planning to make it to Elk.)

(3) Other Hook Restrictions. When fishing with bait in the ocean between Horse Mountain (40º05'00" N. lat.) and Point Conception, if angling by any other means than trolling, then no more than two (2) single point, single shank, barbless circle hooks shall be used. (more circle hook BS)

The key word here is 'bait'.  If you use an artificial lure of some sort with NO live bait on it, you can use barbless J hooks no matter how you fish it.  There was some debate on PFIC about wether berkeley gulp (which has attractant flavor of some sort) counts as bait or artificial.  I think as long as there isn't a piece of flesh of some creature on your rig you'll be alright with J hooks though.  Since you're allowed 2 barbless hooks, I think you can even have 2 jigs on a high-low type setup.  I'd go with a stinger hook myself, salmon are notoriously inaccurate biters.