Warning for fly fishermen: "micro barb" hooks

This is a hook story. To the best of my recollection, roughly around 2006 or 2007, the Mustad Hook Company introduced their new line of so called Signature™ hooks to replace their older Classic™ hook line. My introduction to the new signature hooks occurred when I was staying in Ron Zeelor’s Victorian Altmar NY house when he owned it; while using Ron’s fly tying bench a fellow fly tier offered me some of these hooks to try; the new signature hooks appeared sturdier than the Classic hooks, so afterwards I tied all my new flies from that time forward replacing roughly 20 percent of the flies in my collection with flies tied on the new hooks each year.

At first I noticed nothing; then after two seasons passed, imperceptibly I noticed that my percentage of hook-ups actually landed had declined each year in a proportion corresponding more or less with the percent of the newer signature hooks actually used each year. My hook-up and landing nadir was reached in the fall of 2010 when I rolled many fish, hooked a few, and landed maybe one or two fish in two days. Frustration! My guide, Eddy Martin, now retired, said:

"Set the Hook! The reason you're losing fish is you don't set the hook properly. You're getting older and losing it!"

Ed's diagnosis was entirely plausible, but I resisted the full implication because the only change I was aware of was the increasing use of the Signature hooks. Could the Signature series hooks be the reason? A comparative examination of the new "micro-barb" hooks with older hooks with regular barbs under a magnifying glass provided some confirmation. Unfortunately, I had discarded most of my older Mustad Classic hooks; so a new supply of classic hooks or some other non micro barb alternatives were needed. Mustad had ceased producing their Classic hooks so they were becoming very scarce. After a considerable amount of scrambling on the internet, my search succeeded. While searching I discovered that - not just Mustad - but all the hook manufacturers were currently only producing new "micro barb" type hooks; furthermore, during a telephone conversation with a JS Stockyard representative I asked are there any non micro barb hooks available? He said:

If you can find any, please let me know."

As a test, on November 3, 2011 at the Salmon River's School House pool Ed Martin and I agreed to fish with only Mustad Classic or equivalent hooks and netted and released roughly 100% of all the fish we hooked - approximately 10 steelhead - the only escapees were the ones that managed to break-off. Hooray! The good-old-days were back again! Why?