Anyone use them with plastic worms, or other plastics? If so, in what manner?

I like using a weedless circle hook when splitshotting a reaper or small worm, due to their tendency to swallow the tiny baits.

They work well for wacky worms.

I also use them for wacky rigs, especially if I am casting really far out. When they bite at a far distance, i don't have to worry about setting the hook, I just to have reel the line tight and the fish will hook itself. Also, it is near impossible for a fish to throw a circle hook.

I catch more fish on wacky and neko rigs with a circle hook than I do with a neko hook. If I need weedless, I go to a vmc neko hook. I have also been experimenting with the vmc wacky circle hook with metal weed guard.

I will always fish an exposed hook when I can get away with it.

Im gonna try some for wacky or Neko rigs . I heard you get a better hook up ratio

I use them for wacky and neko. There’s less chance for the fish to get gut hooked as almost every fish is lip hooked because of the design. They are great for weightless baits

One thing I have learned is that if you overdo it on the hookset, you will get a lot of bass skin hooked in the roof of the mouth.

My uncle introduced me to circle hooks when i was 11 or 12. They were the only sensible hook to use for drifting bloodworms along sodbanks, seawalls and jettys. You would free spool a float in a good tide slick, and let it drift into a ideal spot, like a point or small pool. Sometimes that target was on the other side of a creek mouth 70 yards away, or you just wanted ot rift the whole bank or jetty. When the bobber sank, you had a bunch of slack line to take up, which often would result in gut hooks. Thats just not acceptable for tide runner weakfish or bass. The circle hook, which I had no clue existed, was the answer. The claim was crazy, but they worked as advertised. You could still get gut hooks with the smaller sized hooks, but eventually we figured out if you bent the offset out so they would lay flat in your hand, gut hooks became very rare.

Since the hook lays flat, the point isnt as exposed, which is great for the fish. I still had a great landing ratio with inline circles, but there is 100% a difference between the 2.

There are also different styles of circle hooks. Some have a typical octopus style bend and upturned eye, where others have a shorter shank, tighter gap and or a more O'Shaughnessy bend, kind of like some of the mutu/nautilus designs.

I'm a fan of the mosquito hook for wacky/neko, so I would go for an octopus/mosquito style circle.

I saw a video decades ago of a guy using rigging trick worms weedless with circle hooks. It wasn't BS either, he actually caught a fish in the video, so seemingly it worked. I wish I could recall how he did it, sorry. I'm sure you can find it if you look.

Good Luck.

On 6/15/2026 at 7:04 PM, SJS said:

Anyone use them with plastic worms, or other plastics? If so, in what manner?

When Wacky hooked; forget a hard hookset, just pull and reel.

Edited Wednesday at 03:37 AM2 days by Tackleholic