Barbless Hooks - Why Hasn't the Market Shifted?

It seems that there is a divide, among fisher people, with fly fishers divided into 3 camps:

The always barbless: we fish barbless as much for our own sake as much as the fish's, we like hooks to come out of our own skin, as easily as they come out of the mouths of trout. We don't notice or don't care about a larger number lost fish. We never have to worry about crimping on stream; everything in the box is barbless anyway. We buy the barbless version of any hooks we can find, but end up flabbergasted when the knuckleheads working the "fly shop" at the local Bass Pro Shop insist there is no such thing as a barbless hook.

The barbless when required: we fish barbless whenever regulations call for it, but rarely if it's not required. Our fly boxes are a hodgepodge of barbed and crimped, the result of crimping on stream. It's not that we don't like barbless flies, but rather, we'll take every legal advantage we can get.

The barbed: landing fish is the ultimate goal, and while we still release our catch, we want to maximize our chances of holding it in our hands first. We know that the chances of seeing a warden checking barbs are slim to none, and we really don't believe that barbless hooks are any easier on the fish anyway. We have never deeply hooked ourselves with an errant cast.

A great deal of the best fly fishing water in this country is governed by barbless only requirements, ostensibly to ensure the safe release of trout which fall outside of harvest allotments (or the release of all fish).

Some locales have gone a step further, Alberta Canada for example, has regulations mandating barbless hooks only on all waters, regardless of species, harvest regulation, or fishing method. Even bait-fishers there have been forced to make the transition, and many have found the solution in circle hooks, which allow the deep-taking of bait, without the deep hooking of conventional single and treble barbed hooks.

Now, it seems that our fly fishing industry that seems so willing to abandon felt soles, in the name of conservation, is reluctant to embrace a transition to barbless only flies.

I've never seen a barbless fly in a fly shop, even when the shop owner advocates the use of barbless, or many of the local waters carry barbless requirements.

In addition to tying, I also buy a few flies each season from blueflycafe (there are countless other online retailers who sell flies for $.50-$1.00 each), and I have also never seen a barbless version offered in their vast selection.

In fly tying hooks, the options are a little better; Tiemco offers a few hooks in barbless (labeled BL) options, most widely available their standard dry fly hooks (100BL, 900BL), are often found alongside the standard, barbed variety. Partridge offers many barbless hooks, though they are a generally expensive option.

There may be more options out there, but it's difficult to tell, given the lack of support for barbless on the part of the retailers - and that's the disappointing part of it, in an industry that seems to be so intensely supportive of conservation efforts, there is a overall lack of support for the barbless option. I understand it from a short term perspective: you can make a barbed fly mostly barbless, but you can't go the other way around. It seems to me that anyone in the "Always Barbless" camp would obviously choose barbless variants at the point of purchase, the "Barbless when Required" camp would likely be largely indifferent, given many regularly fish regulated waters that require barbless anyway. 

But where's the leadership in the industry? Simms has effectively come out and said that our sport should shift away from felt soles in order to protect from invasives (and that they are taking the lead on that front) - why doesn't someone like Mustad, Tiemco, Gamakatsu, etc... Take the same kind of leadership role, and make a stand for barbless? More likely, it needs to be one of the major fly distributors that the fly shops purchase from - and that will have to come from the shops themselves first - and that points directly at us anglers: Are we asking for barbless as much as we should be?

Whatever the case, I'm ready for barbless hooks to become a widely available option, and eventually replaced barbed hooks altogether.

Alaska's Felt Sole Ban

The Trout Underground (and Others) took note of Alaska's ban on Felt soles, beginning in 2012. Trout Unlimited offers praise for the ban, citing the "Proactive Step" to end this source of transmission of invasive species from watershed to watershed.

 I don't want to say I disagree, but I'm getting close. It seems like this is the resource management equivalent of diet pill, offering great promise and intentions, but being far too narrow and simplified to offer any real benefit, but coming with a whole host of negatives - specifically a potential loss in awareness and a culture of complacency.

Defending against invasive species is about awareness and education. A felt ban just feels like a band-aid that will do little to protect waterways. It could, in fact, work in the opposite direction by creating a false sense of security. The boots still have laces, the waders are made of fabric and have neoprene booties, but it’s the felt soles that get treated like the big-bad-wolf that needs to be killed.

Something seems fishy here to me, the manufacturers seem to be willingly abandoning felt, but the customers (me included) are much less willing, I suppose the rubber soles are much easier or more profitable to make vs. the felt soles. Simms abandoned felt long before any bans went into place (as far as I know), so there's certainly some financial incentive to the boot makers to move in this direction.

(No Tom, you weren't the only one to notice their bizarre willingness to abandon felt over customers' objections.)