Yeah mate ive always had the same problem when trolling for herring, usualy half of them fall off rite at the boat. Not sure what causes it but i just use a landing net and that way only a few get away. They mite just have quite soft mouths? not sure

herring are notorious for throwing the hooks with lures, they have that really fast headshake, I wouldn't think that hook size would make much of a difference. I wonder if running a single hook would work better? I dont seem to lose as many herring on sp's as the little metals but that could be to do with the weight being thrown around.

Its not the trebles are so big per se, but that the three hooks means they dont stay in as well.  The herring will take anything that flashes like a baitfish when they are going off, so Sabuki Jigs, hooks with alfoil on the shank, even green lumo tube or Wall plugs over the shank will work well.  Someone else also said small pieces of soft plastic worm on a normal hook behind a burley blob with a fastish retrieve.  The idea being that on one hook taken properly will result in more boated fish than a treble partially hooked in.

Dropping at the boat or your feet when on the beach can be really frustrating!

You could downsize your trebles, but then I dont know how effective they would be for tailor etc.  Also there are 5gm slices and smaller I think.

Landing herring on trebles is like trying to eat soup with chopsticks.

Tiny trebles work much better.. But if herring are your target, just use a single wide-gap or even a long shank hook. Your landing rate will increase big time!

As Goodz said above, its also the weight of the metal lures that lets the herring throw the lure out of thier mouth a lot easier. If you just want herring, the lumo tube or little soft plastics will result in many more herring being landed.

For a bit more of an all-round trolling lure (to pick up herring, tailor, snook and stuff) just use a single hook on the metal lure.

use really really small trebles so they have a chance of gettin more than 1 hook in. That works, and they cant close their mouths.

yep... the fishing fanatic working at the tackle shop, who is also my fishing mentor, told me that trebles don't work well with herring. probably because of their small mouths. just change the treble to single hooks i suppose. if not you'd probably need a much smaller slice for herrings. i've lost quite a few herrings on slices at dawesville cut myself

Yeah, the head shake and slice weigh makes sense now that i think about it,

Thanks for all the info guys

Can't comment on trolling, but have seen people using trebles from the shore with about a 50% success rate. We actively target them from some of the northern beaches/marinas and use the single, red long shank hooks with I'd say a 95% success rate.

I would say that they single hooks make it easy for them to get on in the first place as well.  I'm not sure how well a long shank would work on a slice, maybe a shorter shank but still the gape you would get on a size 7 would work?

use the gamakatsu single lure hook back to back and youll never drop one

as brenze said signle gamagatsu hooks, and add another split ring it needed, the split ring stops them being able to lever the lure out

I use a very small (size 8 or 10) chemically sharpened hook and rarely lose them once they are on. The problem is that they sometime swallow the hooks - you can use a long shank to avoid this - around a size 6 or 8 is perfect.

down here i use the 3 and 5g twisties with a baby assist hook looped to the front which hangs just at the base of the lure. it works a treat