Freshwater coarse anglers the world over use very small hooks, certainly far smaller than sea anglers use. Carp up to fifty pounds are hooked, landed and successfully released with little or no harm.

I would suggest a fish hooked in the gills is far more likely to be an eventual fatality, as is a fish that is landed and then dragged up a stony beach to be unhooked near the angler's gear. Why this isn't done at the water's edge is beyond me. I will add to this, the number of New Zealand videos showing an angler holding a fish with his fingers in the gill covers prior to release astounds me. The gills are possibly the most delicate of all fish organs and often the most abused.

The safeguard to these problems is having the point and the barb well exposed, the moment the fish has the bait in its mouth it generally turns to swim away and is self hooked in the mouth area. The much loved long line torpedo angler generally uses a recurve hook that demonstrates this perfectly. He does not strike and in many cases the fish may be on a hook for some considerable time before being brought ashore. Most of those fish will be hooked in the corner of the mouth, this is the whole idea of the recurve system.

Many anglers have those vital parts of the hook, the point and the barb hidden or tied deeply into the bait, this means the fish will certainly ingest the hook. I suggest it is not the size of the hook that causes damage, it is poor bait presentation.

To push this point (no pun intended) many carp anglers do not have their hooks in the bait at all, they use a small loop that keeps the hook completely free of the bait when using boiles (sp). This is an extremely successful method of hooking large and small fish and invariably the fish is hooked in the mouth and in many YouTube videos the hook with actually fall out when the fish is netted.