Yep, caught a "shi*e hawk" the other day on a patchinko. 4 gulls decided they wanted it and just like when fish feel the competition, their sense of danger or whatever seemed to go right out of the window. By the time I dragged this gull across the surface of the water and climber down from the structure I was on to unhook it, some female who was walking along the promenade had seen me retrieving the gull across the waters surface. She went ape droppings at me. Accused me of deliberately trying to catch gulls etc and pretty much called me every name she could think of. This was met by my less than gentlemanly way of asking if she really thinks I will spend the best oart of £20 on a lure to catch a gull when I can go to the local store, but a loaf of bread for a quid and ctach dozens of the things??? Or words to that effect anyway.
Going back to the hook issue tho, I have wondered whether it would be feesible to replace trebles with very strong pattern, small barbless hooks?? When I was a kid, the smaller you went in hook size, you could pretty much guarantee that you were going down in hook strength too. But if you look around, there are plenty of small hooks of incredible strength. Look at those used by carp hunnters. A size 4 (and smaller) hook thats more than perfectly capable of hauling in a 40lb+ carp. Or even the specialist small hooks used for catching huge catfish.
Even tho I haven't seen the catfish patterns, in the flesh as it were, I would imagine that they would carry enough inherant weight / mass to quite easily replace most of the trebles. This should cover the weight / balance issue fairly ok, but more importantly it should allow a good rate of hook ups still but with the massive benefit of getting less weed / rock hook ups. It stands to reason that with only 1 third the amount of hook points being trolled thru the water, then unwanted hook ups / snaggings etc should be amply reduced too. Another massive benefit, along these lines, to using single hooks is that they can be rigged weedless so as to avoid even more snags / weed etc.
All I need to do now - I think - is to find said single hooks with big enough eyes so as to allow for the use of a split ring.