I may be over thinking it, but it seems like my minnows die pretty fast when I hook them bottom up through the front/lips whatever you want to call it, even when I am careful not to put the hook through their brain. They seem to last longer hooked sideways in one nostril and out the other, granted they don't stay on the hook as well, or in the back behind the dorsal, high enough not to hit any vitals. The theory I have decided on is when you hook upward through the mouth, the hook sometimes holds the mouth closed and they can't move water through their gills and can't breathe, so they die quicker.

Again, maybe it's total bunk but it makes sense in my mind. I've kept a ton of minnows on the hook for quite a while that I could put back in the bucket and use again later or throw in the water and they'd swim away, but that almost never happens when "lip" hooked.

Maybe I should be more worried about why I can have a minnow on my hook so long and not have it taken off by a fish! Ha! I have tried both ways to try to see a difference in missed strikes, and I can't tell any. I always prescribed to the fish eating prey head first theory and hooked them in the front, but minnows being soft rayed, it does make sense that it wouldn't matter.