When I am worm fishing for LMB in my pond I mash the barb down on the hook with a pair of pliers.

When I do hook a fish deep I cut the line about 18" above the hook. Then I feed the line down beside the gills & then gently pull on the line.

This should cause the hook to rotate making it much easier to get the hook out with a pair of long nosed pliers. The eye of the hook should be pointing toward the fishes tail.

This isn't original with me I found it on some fishing web site last year.

It does make it much easier to remove the hook w/o a lot of stress on the fish.

Jack.....