set the hook at the first sign of action, you'll miss some fish, but will prevent as much throat hooking.
We haven't tried gold hooks, I'll have to pick up some of those also. We did some experiments with red and bronze (normal hook color?), and found that the red way out fished the bronze. The place where we are fishing probably averages 5 inch bluegill, with a fish in the 10 inch range once in a while. There are pumpkinseed in there also, the largest we've caught so far has been 8.5 inches. If we're catching several 8 inch fish on every trip, how big do you think the larger fish are in this pond? This is the first year we've fished it, and I'm very supprised at the fish we're catching. I would guess the pond is around 10 - 12 acres, but I still haven't explored the entire pond yet. I'm not sure how deep it gets. It's long and narrow and winds through a wooded park. The far end is more swamp like. We've seen largemouth and sunfish, but so far we've only caught bluegills and pumpkinseeds. Am I naive in thinking there would be bluegills in the 12 plus range in this pond?