Nasty Muskie bait stories

[buzzsaw]

Accident-prone anglers get hooked on fishing

SAM COOK

Duluth News Tribune

ELY, Minn. - Emergency room physician Steve Park of Ely remembers the case well. A muskie fisherman. Lake Vermilion. Big ol' muskie bait stuck in his head.

"The hook went through the top of his ear and into his scalp, back out of the scalp and back through his ear again," Dr. Park said. "His ear was pinned to his head. His buddy had got him on the back cast."

Anglers have found many ways to get impaled by fish hooks. Park has seen plenty of those cases as a physician with the Ely Clinic. So have his counterparts at other emergency rooms in the Duluth area.

Fish long enough and you're likely to get hooked or be a witness to a hooking. Most accidental hookings can be treated in the field, but each year, emergency rooms in northeastern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin have patients show up with lures dangling from various places on their bodies.

"I had one guy come in with a lure hanging from his nose like a nose ring," said Dr. Nancy Rova, a family practice and emergency room physician at Cook County North Shore Hospital in Grand Marais.

"They come in every different way you can think of," Park said. "I bet we see more in the hands than any place else. The reason is people are taking northerns off the hooks, and the fish flops. Or it's a back cast, and the hook is lodged in the back of their head."

Rova said her emergency room might see three or four people wearing fish hooks on a busy summer day.

"I bet I take out 6 or 8 a week," Park said. "It's pretty common on a weekend to take out three or four in a day. We probably do a couple hundred a year."

Physicians tend to remember unusual cases, such as the muskie bait Park extricated.

"I've had one man who came in with one lure in both thumbs," Rova said. "He was out in a canoe by himself. He was yelling to his wife to come and get him because he couldn't paddle."

Dr. Sandy Stover, another physician at Cook County North Shore Hospital, remembered when a husband and wife came in together, each wearing a different lure.

"She had hooked her husband on the back of his shoulder," Stover explained. "The man had reeled in his line, and when his wife was trying to disentangle her lure from him, he hooked her in the forearm with his lure.

"They weren't too happy. They asked to be seen in separate rooms."

"The biggest concern are the ones stuck in the face or around the eyes," said Dr. Bob Zotti, an emergency room physician with St. Mary's Medical Center in Duluth.

"We had one actually stuck in the eyeball itself," he said. "We had to call in an eye specialist. We thought we might do more damage trying to take it out."

Dr. John McKichan of Stone Lake, Wis., works the emergency room at the Hayward Area Memorial Hospital and has seen a lot of big muskie lures.

"The head and hands - pretty much all over the body they get hooked," he said. "We had a kid once that picked one up in the winter in the back of a car. Somehow he got it in the mouth - one of the trebles in the upper lip and one in the lower lip."

McKichan also saw a girl three years ago with a hook up inside her nose. He had to sedate her briefly, but he got it out.

Dr. Charles Helleloid, with the Duluth Clinic in International Falls, recalled a case in which a fisherman had put a large muskie lure into his forehead. He was a long way down Rainy Lake on a windy day.

"He came pounding down the lake holding it carefully," Helleloid said. "By the time he got to our place, he had one hook in his hand and one in his forehead. But thankfully, both of those came out in the usual fashion."

That wasn't the case when an angler put a hook into the front of his thigh while fishing on the Kabetogama Peninsula between Rainy and Kabetogama lakes. He cut the hook off at his skin so it wouldn't catch on his clothes as he walked out of the peninsula to his boat, which was waiting on Kabetogama.

"I put on a little Novocain but didn't find the hook," Helleloid said. "What had happened is that hook had gotten into the muscle. The barb, as he was walking, acted like a ratchet. It drew the hook two inches into the big muscle in front.

"What you'd have thought would be a two- to three-minute project took several X-rays to locate and a substantial surgery to remove."

The busy season for hook problems varies by location. In the Duluth-Superior area, it's spring and early summer, said Dr. Brian Bergeron, an emergency room physician at St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth.

"People get more wise as the season goes on," Bergeron said.

In Ely, July and August are the busiest months, Park said. The peak in Hayward is from about June 15 to Aug. 15, said McKichan.

[thewalleyeguy]

WOW

[Random guy]

That is brutal. The one in the leg was tough, two inches deep!

I got a suick behind the knee once that was a little rough around all the workings that goes on in that area but nothing like the eyeball or both hands at once. Those little pike are the worst. I would much rather deal with a big thrashing musky then one of those wild 3lb pike that go crazy once you get close to them.

[big musk411]

I got one in the hand once. I was about 13 and on a canoe trip in the BWCA. I caught about a 3 pound northern on a #12 husky jerk. I was taking it off and it started thrashing. I ended up with on hook in the underside of my middle finger and another still in the fish. It was hanging from my hand shaking. The hook in the hand wasn't at painfull as you would think. the painfull part was when I had to poke it all the way through and when I tried to cut the hook with a crapy leatherman that instead of cutting it, the hook went sideways in between the cutter and twisted the flesh it was caught in 90 degrees.

I now keep a quality pair of hook cutters in the boat!

[38poundbeauty]

Nothing beats the story that my grandfather and I had in Canada. I was 17 and he took me on my first fly-in trip to an exclusive Canadian lake. On the second to last day of the trip, a hammerhandle (notice the trend) went wild and he ended up catching a treble in the thumb. BUT, here's the kicker....The barb went directly into the joint of the thumb, so as soon as it swelled up, it was basically like a vice. So here we are, MILES from anything you could even call civilization and he clearly needed medical attention. After returning to the lodge and taking a few shots of brandy to numb the pain, they tried yanking it. Didn't even budge. It was then that they knew that had to venture to a hospital. However, getting to a hospital required taking a boat across a few miles of water and driving 30 miles in complete rustic wilderness until they could find a paved road. Luckily they made it to the hospital before dark and were able to remove the hook. That was the good news. The bad news was that they now needed to get back to the lodge in COMPLETE darkness. While driving back through the woods at what my grandpa said to be almost 60 mph (crazy Canadian lodge owners), they NAILED a deer. With the truck battered and bruised, they kept on driving and made it to the lake....Despite the lodge owners wealth of knowledge on the Canadian waters, he could not for the life of him realize how to get back to the lodge in the complete darkness. For almost 30 minutes they motored aimlessly across the water, searching for the lodge, until SMACK! While running wide open across the water in darkness, the owner didn't manage to see the rock protruding out of the water. The motor kicked up and almost fell off the boat....bringing the boat to a jerking halt. Miraculously, the motor still worked and they someone found their way back to the lodge. But what a story....

[fishin58]

I have also had some good luck catching some big ones, when i was about 14 i was in the front of the boat casting for northerns, i was shirtless of course but to make the story my uncle was also casting from th boat, he was using an ounce daredevle, when splat against my back then a cast, he snagged me right beloww the shouder blade with two of the hooks, so we did some ER on the bow of the boat a rusty pliers a beer and a few nice words, were the tools of choice, then about 4 years ago I caught a about pound and a half bass on rapala, he flopped and one of the the set of hooks went through the webbing of my thumb and pointer fingers, and to make it better the bass was still flopping on the other hook, then last weekend my dog took an xrap hook up the nose, that one required a vet

[Tonka Boy]

Amazing stories. I always wondered what people do in the remote wilderness.

I've never been hooked myself but a friend of mine has. He's told me the story an number of times so I'll share...

Bascially his dad caught him in the back of the head with a musky bait. He never noticed and went ahead with the full cast. Needless to say the lure embedded in the back of his head and proceeded to "scalp" from the hair line up a bit -- sending the whole mess (including his hat) into the depths.

I think he ended up with some stiches after everything was said and done, but I donno. I can't get past the "scalping" part of the story. Ouch!!

[DitchPickle13]

Wow. On a trip earlier this year, while we were launching the boat, a guy pulled up to the dock and his dog had about an 8 inch bucktail swinging from it's nose(before bass or Muskie season).

[toonfish]

My brother always lays lures on the floor of the boat and forgets to pick them up. (I have told him a thousand times previous to this story happening). So we get on a spot one day and I throw the anchor down (18-25 feet of water). As I am letting the anchor slip through my hands full speed, guess what? Yep, it picks up a lure from the floor and goes zipping right into my hand. The pain makes me let go of the anchor with my other hand, not realizing that I am supporting the weight of the 30 lb. anchor with a trebel that is stuck in my hand. My bro had to pull the anchor up while I started to work the hook out. I got the hook out, rested, yelled at him and then beat him up! I felt much better

[mtreno]

did the same thing on mille lacs last weekend. dang bucktail stuck in the line. did not want to be walleye fishing in the first place. did not want to bobber fish for walleyes even more..... and of course right into the palm. man that hurts! course we pounded or limit of 12 eyes in a little over an hour so that helped a little bit. but i did not let anyone in the boat know i was at all happy.

[pikepounder]

Last July I was out alone trolling a Lil Ernie for northerns on a lake near Willmar. I had barbless trebles on it, and I had just caught three or four northerns around 3 lbs and had no problem with them shaking the hooks lose without barbs. Each time I took off the northern with a leather glove. For some reason I got the bright idea to replace the barbless trebles with ones that had barbs. Five minutes later I hooked into a 5 lber. I brought it in a got another bright idea to save some time and not use the leather gloves anymore. A couple seconds later I had one treble through my thumb and the other still attached to the thrashing northern. Those barbs sure did their job. It never ceases to amaze me how an idea can seem so good at the time, yet end up being very stupid.