1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a device enabling a means of maintaining a desired orientation of a means of catching a fish, such as, but not restricted to, a hook, snare, artificial bait, or lure.
2. Background Information
Throughout history, man has struggled to advance the art of catching fish, for various and sundry reasons such as, but not restricted to, hunger, sport, sand assurances that he is smarter than the fish.
In using jig hooks, and related hardware, existing art has problems in that there is no sure way to maintain a hook at a desired angle to a line prior to a fish taking the hook and also inside a mouth of a fish. The hooks in the prior art tend to either fail to reliably, snag the fish and/or they can become lodged deep in the mouth of the fish where removal of the hook is difficult and catch and release of the fish is also difficult.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,592,664 to De Mello shows a prior art fishing lure. Primarily intended as a double hook, FIG. 1, '664 does show in FIG. 4 a single hook 29 with an upper eye 27 a lower eye 25, a lever arm 26 between them and a hook shaft 28 held perpendicular to a line 10, and a weight 11. The De Mello patent is primarily designed to maintain the hook in a weedless (column 2 line 40) orientation and is designed to snag fish in the lower jaw. Since most fish dive down when taking bait and hook, and since the fisherman will pull up to set the hook, trying to hook the lower jaw (column 2, line 38) is the least desirable target in many cases. The De Mello patent contemplates only a single position with the hook shaft 28 perpendicular to the line 10 (column 2 line 30) and the hook end 31 in a downward orientation. Finally, the hook 29 of DeMello has a very long hook shaft 28, the hook shaft 28 being 4 or 5 times longer than the apparent diameter of the hook curve 30 of the hook 29. What the long hook shaft 28 means is that the hook end 31 is likely to hook the fish deep in the mouth or gut making catch and release impossible.
As will be seen, the present invention overcomes the limitations of the prior art.