Well on my way to taking my poor German Shepard to boarding last weekend he managed to find a 1/0 Gama attached to about 4 ft. of leader, and I guess he could not resist the shrimp scent that was left on the hook after many many shrimp tails.

When I took him he started hacking and pawing his snout. I saw that he had about 3 ft of mono hanging out of his mouth and I HOPED that the hook was shallow. But as I pryed open his mouth I saw no hook. Thats when my heart dropped. They wisked him away to the ER and took this x-ray. You can see his skull and his backbone and that the hook was pretty shallow in the picture so they didnt have too much difficulty managing to pry the hook out. They did have to put him under and hook him up to IV's though.

I guess the process would have been much easier for them if the hook was debarded. So debard your hooks all you pet owners...

And again, I guess thats why they call me Special.

[ 06-26-2001: Message edited by: RPetzold ]

Wow that sucks! Im glad to hear he made it out unscaved!
Along time ago I was getting ready to go bass fishing (before I could drive to rivers) and was trying to get a bunch of loose line off the bait caster so I casted my Rapala out in the yard and was reeling it in when out of no were a cat ran out and grabed that little critter running across the lawn. It was a bad thing but it was the best fight I ever had! It took 15 minutes to catch that cat and get him un hooked. It took me and my friend to hold the cat and get the hooks out. 2 trebles even. We ended up with more bleeding than that poor cat. Needless to say that cat never killed another mouse! Glad to hear your Dogs well!


Bob D

Sorry to hear about your pooch Ryan, life is full of leasons, the real key is not having to learn them first hand.

Another almost as compelling reason is as follows:

I was a young lad just learning the ways of the levelwind reel. Never really did get the hang of it but that's not the point. I was on the Sandy with my father and a friend of his, and I was sitting away from the stream digging out yet another rat's nest of mono. If this were television we would now split back and forth between my father's friend making a cast and a nice close-in shot of my father's left ear.

Shot #1: friend goes to cast and on the forward motion gets hung up on what he thinks is brush behind him.

Shot #2: hook with chartreuse yarn embeds itself into the hard stuff above my father's left earlobe.

Shot #3: friend gives rod a good forward tug to try and free it from the "brush" behind him.

Shot #4: father's head jerks forward as the barb goes in deep enough so that it cannot be backed out easily but not far enough to bring it forward.

Shot #5: father spends the next several hours continuing to fish with this yarn-clad hook in his ear.

Luckily it was winter steelies we were fishing for, as it kept the bloodflow to that region of the ear to a minimum. He didn't bleed until he got to the hospital.

De-barb your hooks. If not for the sake of the fish, do it for your fellow anglers.

Yeah, we've got pets also and that stuff sucks. Sorry about you're dog. I know I remember when we were up on the lewis a few years back fishing silver and there were these three goofs in this driftboat. One guy up front was fishing a spinner on a older reel that was short on line, you could tell because every cast he made you'd have thought he was trying out for the olympics casting contest only with a result of about 30 feet. While winding up on one of his casts he caught the oarsman on the back side of the head, lifted him right off of seat. Then proceed to jerk upwards until you heard the most awful squeal I've ever heard. Sounded like a mountain lion in heat, screaming to get him to stop jerking. Then they didn't have any pliers abord so I motored over and gave them a pair and the guy had them turn the hook the rest of the way through and pull it out, man it looked painful. Barbless would have been a lot easier.
Keith

If you fish with your kids, you have to take the barb off the hooks. I never take anything other than barbless hooks with me, when taking my kids fishing. So far none of them have been stuck, but if it happens, they won't be freaking out with a hook buried in them, on the way to the ER. Losing a few fish, is a helluva lot better than turning your kids off to fishing.

Sparky, nice to hear pooch is doing OK. Until I read your post, I thought Rat might have set his BK Broiler on the counter and swallowed one of my gammy's.

Cats will also hit a crappie jig. Color doesn't seem to matter. Guess that's why they call it catfishin'

I'll have to remember rapalas the next time I go "cat fishing." The barbless hooks help a lot. So far I have caught and released 2 seagulls, both caught "on the fly", one muir on a plug cut herring, one Canada goose also "on the fly", and one cockapoo puppy on her first day with us whose name became "MEPPSY".

I'll bet that pound for pound geese are a lot harder to land than any cat. Darned thing nearly spooled me twice!

Sorry to hear about you dog, I hope all goes well.

Andy

Andy,
How did you get a goose on the fly? That would be funnier than hell! I've accidently had seagulls grab my bait and fly around but a couple of good hook sets and you usually get you're stuff back, but when you don't they sure make a wicked hiss sound. Wouldn't like to hear a goose up close.
Keith

I find it amazing how much of a difference is it when fishing with barbless hooks. I was lazy about debarbing my hooks i figured i would lose fish that way. When fishing for steelhead I would get a lot of "little stuff" with some being killed accidently. Without the barb the little stuff usually can get off by itself or very easly by me. I don't belief it has made any differenc with the larger fish. They should make it mandatory to have barbless hooks for all fisheries.

stlhdr1,

I was fishing for bass in the Arboretum portion of Lake Washington. I had seen geese all day, flying back and forth. Just as I cast a spinner bait, a goose flew past me from behind. The cast was a high looper, hit the water and the goose flew into the line. The spinner bait comes up out of the water and hooks the goose in the wing and "SMACK", down goes the goose. The goose proceeded to try and fly away, but couldn't get airborne because of the tension I was putting on the bird. Caught the bird after about 20 VERY LOUD minutes. Got the hook out and the bird flew off after beating me with it's wings a few dozen times. I didn't notice a lot of blood, but then again when you have a 10lb bird flogging you with it's wings, there isn't a whole lot of time to look.

The police showed up to investigate because more than a few concerned citizens see parts of this battle. I showed them the spinnerbait with the barbless hooks and got an 'attaboy' from them for releasing the goose more or less intact, no pepper spray even!

I wanted to cut the line a few times, but honestly didn't think the goose would have a chance trailing 50 feet of 12lb mono, so I kept with it.

GOOSE ON!