battle scars

[so haaad]

A friend of mine accidently pierced his own nipple with a blue and silver rapala. It went in really deep, so he had to go to the hospital. It happened on a lake in Alexandria, although I don't know if they put that one on the hospital's cardboard fisherman.

[Jackpine Rob]

Hooks can be fun and interesting when buried into human flesh - but how about unusual fish injuries? Not the run-of-the-mill treble hook in the northern catching you, but an honest to God, sure as heck its unusual, you can't believe it happened injury?

Mine came on an evening in late May, up in the Boundary Waters. Cousin and myself had finally figured the buggers out, and were pulling in the walleyes hand over fist. Due to the volume of fish coming in and the cold weather, we had dispensed with stringers and such, and decided to toss the "keepers" right in front of me, in the stern of the canoe.

Well, my cousin tosses a keeper back towards me, and the doggoned thing comes down onto my thigh - dorsal fin first - and 4 of the spines penetrate REAL good - and the weight of the fish and the toss make sure its not staying like that - and the freaking spines break off - and I go
"OOOOOHHHHH ([PoorWordUsage])!"
- and we continue fishing, as my leg throbs, and starts to cramp, and finally we decide enough is enough....... We had our limit (in more ways than one).

Now keep in mind, it was a mite chilly, so I was wearing your basic duck pants, and a pair of long johns. Every time I tried to move the leg, the broken ends of the spines rubbed on the pants/long johns, sending fresh jolts through the leg. It needed to be fixed.

Thar I wuz, standing on the portage with my pants and long johns around my knees, in the darkness, walleyes flopping against the aluminum, my cousin holding a flashlight aiming at my pasty white flesh and making gagging noises, and me with a pair of hemostats and a knife performing surgery.

Thank God for Windsor.

[can it be luck?]

Jackpine, I can imagine that scenario, ouch!
My fish/injury related experience's are this, 16 years old and fishing a river behind the back of my house in Florida. A 4' alligator gar chased my rubber worm up to the bank and sat there. I snagged and fought him untill I was able to get him close to the steep bank. Once close to the bank I grabbed him and flung him on shore. I didn't realize the gar was missing half of his upper jaw exposing numerous sharp and long teeth! As I started to carry this gar home it thrashed around and it's teeth raked my bare shoulder leaving 1/4-1/2" slices like the teeth on a comb. I still have that scar today as a reminder of him.
What did I do with the gar?
If you've been to Florida you'll know that there are canals all over the state. I tossed him in a small canal that had only guppies in it and the kids in the neighborhood and I would catch it on occasion. It gave us something to do when we were bored.
The same spot I caught the gar is also where I caught(almost) a big water Moccasin. The snake chased my topwater bait right to the 3' steep dropped bank. The snake then tryed to "lunge" at me but the steepness of the bank prevented him from striking me. I started to whack him with my pole tip and my lure snagged him in the face. Now my pole is bent in half and there's a [PoorWordUsage]ed off snake trying to attack me just a couple feet away!! Thinking quick, I gave the snake a "flip" with my rod, similar to the way you'd flip baits for bass. The snake flew halfway across the river then stared to "beeline" back at me and my younger brother. I don't know if he ever made it back to shore........We were long gone by then!!!
Thank God I put on some heavy duty line after the gar incident to allow me to flip the huge snake! After that day I always brought my Ted Williams 12 gauge pump with me on my fishing trips. You never know what to expect when fishing in Florida!
Stingrays and Jellyfish?. I got a couple of those stories too!

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http://groups.msn.com/canitbeluck

[Ice9]

Fishing solo from a jonboat in a small local lake I over shot badly with a heavy rebel diving plug, and put it into an oak tree. The branch was out of reach and would flex a lot, so I pulled it hard, harder, hardest and it popped loose and came zooming back toward me. I did what you would naturally do--I flinched and hunched puckered and turned my back and got a treble in my a55, through my jeans. I was younger and more flexible in those days and when I finally got a look at it I almost passed out. That hurts, let me tell you.
An old Korean guy was fishing on shore--he spoke very little english but he gestured to me and I went over and he made me lie on my stomach across the boat seat and got the hook out using the mono loop method. I didn't actually see it but it was so quick and painless that I made him demonstrate it for me. Since then I've been a fishing guide for ten years and have used it many times, including twice on myself. It doesn't always work, including the one time I put a hook through the fingernail of the middle finger on my right hand. That was an ER situation, but the young doctor had never handled a fishhook. I'd cut it off and didn't have another one. i guess she'd been raised in a non-fishing environment because she couldn't even envision the barb and curve of the hook. So once the anaesthetic had taken I took the tool and twisted it out and she got a little woozy.
I guided on the POtomac River for smallmouth. We used barbless hooks mostly, though there were a few occasions where even a barbless hook wouldn't come out. Once a guy wade fishing hailed me from the shore. He had caught an eight inch smallmouth on a rebel crawdad crankbait then slipped and hooked himself with both trebles, four points altogether, two from one treble in index and middle finger and two in the thumb with the fish still attached and squeezed between. I had all the tools I wanted, and he was a tough old bird, but we made no progress at all except to get rid of the fish and I had to send him to the hospital.
One more? On a charter boat in the gulf stream I saw a mate try to handle a sixty pound bluefin tuna that was still green. He hit it with a big gaff and had it just at the rail but couldn't quite get it over. I had the rod and nobody else was in the cockpit. He had the fish by the gaff handle and tail but the fish jerked itself then snapped itself across his wrist, burying the 7/0 hook in his forearm well past the barb. The hook is feathered and runs through a tube in the lure, and it was through the fish's mouth and into his wrist. He tried to hold on to it but it teetered on the rail until the captain got there just in time and yanked it back into the boat, so the whole weight of the fish yanked on the hook then the flailing gaff handle hit the mate across the face and knocked him silly. We finished out the trip but that hook was well past the bend in his arm--a good inch-and-a-half deep. The captain said they have lots of those.

ice

[Ole1855]

This didn't happen to me but I witnessed it. Somewhere in the mid 80's my fishing buddy and I were at Mille Lacs trolling cranks in mid October, we got a few fish and froze our butts off, at around 10:30 p.m. we had had enough and headed into Myr Mar bar to warm up. Sometime around midnight a guy comes into the bait shop part of the bar yelling "look at this, do you have a scale"? We all went back to see what he was talking about, here's this guy holding up a northern that was in the neighborhood of 20 #'s, he dispatched the fish and put it on the scale, I think it came in at 22#'s. The guy's hands were all full of blood and slim so he goes into the bathroom to wash them, when he comes out his hands are still full of blood and we realize that 'HE' is where the blood is coming from. I asked him where's all the blood coming from and he say's " I didn't have a net and I didn't want to loose the fish, so I stuck my hand into it's mouth to grab it" we looked at his hand and all down the palm and fingers were slices from the huge teeth of this northern!! Now for any of you who have had cuts, punctures, slices from fish spines or bullhead barbs or gill plates, you know how the bacteria get's into the cuts and fester's, I can't imaging this guy's hand the next several days!!

Ole

[catchin'whopper]

I will make this short.

Cast of Characters/Props:
Hula Popper (w/ treble hooks)
Canoe
2 Brothers and I

Result:
Hula Popper dangling from my nose from my brother's line connected to his fishing rod while he was on his backswing for a cast.

[This message has been edited by catchin'whopper (edited 04-13-2004).]

[traveler]

Last summer on the Kenai river in AK, red salmon threw the hook which shot straight back at me and buried in my cheek. It was all my buddy could do to push the barb on a big 3/0 through my cheek so he could snip it off. At least I didn't miss much fishing time...

[2dalake]

Did you get a picture of that Hula Popper?

[Rippinlip]

Few years back catching Bass and Northerns on a little lake in southern Mn, 'bout a 4 lb northern decided to back out of a hand landing job and drove a big 'ol treble thru my ring finger on my left hand, after trying to cut the barb off with side cutters in the boat it was off to the Northfield hospital for help.
Better yet, my worse injury came from fishing, tied the boat off to the dock was jumping to the dock to get the truck and wet wooden dock+momentum+brainfart=torn MCL out of action for weeks..
That stunk!!!!!!!

[JiggingSpoon]

well an injury that happened to my dad would be one that didn;t involve a hook, him and his buddy were cleaning walleyes that they caught about 100 miles north of Red Lake, Ontario, on a fly-in outpost, no one on the same lake as them and nothing to use to contact anyone accept for the buoy to through off the dock so overhead planes can see it, but it was dark out,
anyways to get to the story, they were cleaning fish, and one of the walleyes started flopping around, my dad slapped his hand down on it the same time his buddy did, and his buddy had a filet knife in his hand, the blade hit with ful force diagonally across his hand from his wrist to the pinky on the top of his hand, the knife probably went in about 1/4-3/8 inches deep about 2 1/2 inches long, they had nothing to do, he definetly would have needed stitches, but all he did was pour whiskey on it every night to keep it from getting infected, now you can barely see the scar, thank you for whiskey, that could have been a lot worse
JS

[Guest]

How about a 1oz daredevil to the back of the head.

To make it better, the hookie was the hooker!!!!

On a fly-in, my buddy casted his spoon, and the thumb slipped on the spool, allowing some line to slip out. As he casted, he stuck the hook into the back of his melon!

Well, after a bottle of jack, a leatherman, some iodine, we ripped her free!!!! (yes, I mean ripped!!!

he healed........

[ChuckN]

When I was about 10 years old I casted a large northern lure over my head, the lure snagged a tree and I ripped it out of the tree and into the back of my head.

It took a few ER doctors and nurses to get the large hook out of my skull. The large barb on the hook was the problem. They had to drill a hole in my head to push hook through instead of pulling it out. Local anesthetics didn't work so as you can tell it was the most pain I have ever experienced.

[Guest]

Got one more!!!

Almost forgot about this one.

Used to live in Texas, during my time in the military.

Anyways, a buddy and I went catfishing. He brought his dog (half chow, half german shepard). This dog was a bit of a pain, but tolerable.

Back to the story........

So, I packed my treble hook with stinkbait and turned to the water to wash my hands.

As I turned back, I got to see, just in time, the dog eat the bait!!!!

I tackled the dog, yelled at my friend, but it was too late, the dog SWALLOWED the bait.......hooks and all.

I cut the line, and she swallowed the remainder of that too.

Well, there wasn't a whole lot we could do. I wrote it off as a beginning of an end. My buddy didn't have the money to have a vet perform surgery to remove the treble hook. It was a very truely sad afternoon. (You can imagine what was about to happen to this dog's stomach..........)

So, as a last resort (since we are both dog lovers), we called the vet, to see what it was going to cost.

The vet said not to worry, the dog's stomach acids would disolve the hook!!!!!!!!!!!!

The dog lived a full, long, healthy, happy life!!!!!!!!!!!

[J-Hawk]

My brother and I were fishing on Springpole Lake in Ontario 2 years ago. We were no where near a hospital. I was taking a small pike off when I got the treble hook of my Yo-Zuri crystal minnow set into my thumb. I knew I was screwed but then the northern shook hard and the hook went out the other end of my thumb. Good thing for both of us because I know I would not have been able to do this on my own. I just cut the hook and released the northern (after some questionable language of course)

[Guest]

These stories are GREAT!!! I have been very lucky....no hooks in fingers or other body parts..thank god