Duuuuuuuuuuuude
I think you need about seven 2/0 trebles on that thing :-) Now I wasn't there to see the fish hit the bait, but what do you think was happening? Most fish that I have watched eat my plug come up from underneath or even from the side and grab the lure crosswise. It looks kind of like you would look if you took a bite bite out of a piece of corn on the cob. Most fish hit towards the head of the bait, or occasionally right in the middle of the bait. Now this is just a theory, but I would bet you that when they hit that eagle bait from the side or from underneath and take a big bite, their mouths are open about 2" because of the bulk of the bait. Feeling the bite, you set the hook, but unless the hook is already pointing towards something on the inside of the fishs' mouth, the fish can just open it's mouth and spit it out. A 10+ might be able to inhale the whole thing, in which case you'd probably hook up, but a 3 to 6lber has a hard time completely inhaling such a big lure. With one treble point in the bait, and the two other hooks pointing forward it makes it tough for the hooks to catch. With trebles that are dangling down underneat the bait, the area is greatly increased where the fish could hit the bait and get stuck. The hooks swinging under the bait just allows them to grip in a different way than when they are pinned tight to the body of the lure. It totally reminds me of the stocker trout when I was rigging trebles under the head of the bait with one hook point in the bait and the other two sticking out. I probably missed 5 bites in a row before giving up on that one. Whatever the dynamics are of that hook setup, it just doesn't seem to work very well for me. There has to be a better way to rig it, maybe how brian did his, but then you get into the problems where the bait doesn't run right and snags itself and on and on. The tradeoffs between realistic lures and lures that hook and land fish are things that I dream about at night. The perfect lure still does not exist in my mind but maybe someday it will be invented.

Well 14.5lbs is nothing to sneeze at, sounds like you guys adjusted and got a nice limit. What was working for the guys who won / placed high?