Couple years ago I built a bunch of rod holders out of PVC. They were U shaped instead of the circle design shown below. They worked fine in the U shape, one leg on each side of the hole. Well again I had some spare pvc and I decided to try adding some home brew auto-hooking capability. Normally I hold a rod and jig it, but we do put out other rods in shallower and deeper water from our location to see if fishing is better either way from where we setup. Those poles I wanted to try this type of design on.
That said, here is what I ended up with, I enclosed the loop and added the trigger:
Looking forward to giving them a try this winter!
-DallanC