We have been fishing 4 tanks or ponds or pools of water here east of San Antonio, Tx. for years and have used live bait for all those years and have not lost more than five bass out of hundreds caught from taking a hook too deep. We started using the line thru the gill technique to save those hooked fairly deeply quite a while back and it has been very succesful. We also have missed many bites when we tried the circle hooks. I was wondering if others have seen the same problem with circle hooks and also had no problems with live bait. One quick story. I hooked a bass that was about 1 lb. a few weeks ago and watched him jump a couple of times and all of a sudden my pole bent a lot more than a one pounder could bend it. The water was real clear (another problem) and I saw about a five pounder with the little guy sticking out of his mouth swim by. I kept up the pressure and the bigger boy turned loose. When I got the small one in he was missing some scale on both sides but otherwise ok. Turned him loose cause I figured he had had a bad enough day at that point.