What's the worse time that you have ever put a hook into you self or have seen happen to another fishermen?

I got a couple good stories of my own, but thought that it might be interesting to see how many other fishermen have gotten themselves hooked before. I have two to my record (pass the barb), what about you? There may some pretty funny stories to tell out there... now that the hook is out!


Cowlitzfisherman

We were floating a river in Alaska. It was late in the trip, and silvers had been hard to catch. We had camped on a wide gravel bar, at a spot where the river had a nice little eddy on the far side. Easily reachable with a spoon, kinda tough to reach with a fly.

I was wearing a ball cap, not the filson brimmed hat I normally wear when throwing big flies. I was fishing a size two flash fly. Now, for uninitiated, a flash fly is made on this big nasty mustad fly hook, which has a shank about an inch and a half long, and it's made of extra heavy wire. Then you wrap it with heavy lead wire so that it will sink. Alas, this was before I decided to debarb all my flies at home as I tie them. Which I do now, always, for reasons we shall yet discuss.

The morning came, and I got up first, and started making the fire. As I was bent over the fire, a wave of silvers started rolling their way up the far side of the hole. I immediately abandoned the fire, and grabbed my eight wgt. I didn't have waders on, so I was stuck at the waters edge. I started roll casting out and frantically stripped line to get ready for the across river cast. I flipped the heavy sink tip out into the current, Ipicked it up and let it fly. Twenty feet too short, and a silver rolled just beyond my fly. With slightly trembling fingers, I stripped out the line to the backing, flipped the line out ahead of me, threw one cast back, one forward, a long shooting back cast, grip the line, haul forward, and hit myself dead in the back of the head with the sink tip. An eight wgt sink tip weighs about 220 grains, and is traveling at about 300 feet per second.

After smacking me in the back of the head, the line continued forward, but the fly was on the wrong side of my head. It raked across my ear, piercing it just where all the barristas are doing it these days. The line continued merrily forward, snapping the 15 lb maxima leader taut, and snapping it. The act of snapping it buried the barb deeply into my upper ear.

OK, this was fun. We're three days drift from anything faintly resembling civilisation (and the best we could do was a faint resemblance). I've got a new, well ahead of the times adornment that hurts like hell. And the fish are moving upstream.

There was only one thing to do. Fortunately, we had not exhausted our supply of whiskey. We put a little on my ear, a little in me, and pulled it out.

For the rest of the trip, everyone gave me grief for breaking off the big one on the strike.

Didn't happen to me but great story anyways. I was on the Kalama in the fly only water when a guy that fishes there quite a bit comes by with a patch on his eye. And the story goes like this. He started his day by stepping on his brand new Nikon fishing glasses that keeps his eyes protected and glare off the eyes. He proceeds to fish. As he is taking a break, a gentleman (for lack of better word), comes down and asks him what he is doing to hook the fish he was successfully hooking. He gave the guy a quick casting lesson and let the guy go. He was WAY behind the guy when the guys fly came back and hooked the white part (schlera) and came out through the center (pupil). He reactively grabbed at his eye, successfully grabbing the line as the ... gentleman proceedes to yank on the obstruction behind him. Phil yells at the guy to stop while trying to keep his eye from being pulled from the socket. The um... gentleman freaks out, running up the embankmnet to help Phil while trouncing Phils brand new Loomis GLX. The guy apoligizes to no end to Phil while giving Phil his number, saying he was a doctor in Seattle and would cover any medical expense. Needless to say, PHil got his eye patched with little damage and the phone number was bogus. Made my skin crawl just hearing the story form him.

This could get ugly…maybe even get classed by Bob as a "horror thread"
I am sure he could tell a story or two

But here's one that happen to me about 25 years ago. Three of use where out fishing for Corvina at the Salton Sea in California. It was just getting light in the morning, and we were headed to Bombay from Corvina Beach in my buddy's 14 foot skiff. We were all looking for birds feeding on the water (a sure bet to find feeding Corvina). We spotted a bunch of birds diving on a school of bait and we headed for the area as fast as possible.

In those days, we were using 1 ½ oz chrome crocodile spoons that were about 6-8 inch long and were fitted with 4/0 or 5/0 treble hooks. We liked using these kinds of lures because they resembled the small corkers that Corvina so often feed upon. For those of you that don't know what a Corvina looks like, they look just like a "White Sea Bass". They can get to up to the 40 pound class, but average about 8-20 lbs. When hooked, they love to jump out of the water just like a tarpon does, and try to "throw the hook" while they are dancing on there tails. It's quite a sight to see!

The Salton Sea gets hot! I mean really hot. It is not uncommon for it to be 110 degrees in May by 10 am, and it never seems to drops below 80 at night during this same time period. So needless to say we all had just our shorts on and nothing else. Well, we finally stopped the boat and grabbed our rods and everyone started casting into boiling swirls of fish. It didn't take but a few seconds and all three of us were on solid to nice sized fish. My fishing buddy who was standing next to me hung into the biggest one (about 20-25 lbs) and out of the water it came!

It walked on the water for about ten or fifteen feet, violently shaking its head with that 8 inch crocodile spoon hanging from its jaw. When all of a sudden, my buddy fell backwards and yelled duck! As I looked up, in horror, I could see that that damn spoon was headed right at me like a silver knife! It happened so fast that all I could do was to duck, and lower my head and protect me from getting that spoon right between the eyes. Well 25 years ago, I was pretty fast, so that sucker didn't get to nail me between the eyes!

But that sucker did nail me right between my shoulder blades in the center of my back!

It happened so fast, that it didn't even hurt. All I could feel was something heavy hanging from the middle of my back. Now this is when you find out who your "true" fishing buddies really are! I handed my rod to my buddy because I still had my fish on, and my buddy's lure hanging in the middle on my back. I couldn't reach the damned thing because it was stuck right between my shoulder blades in the middle of my upper back.

Both of my "good buddy's" just kept on fishing! And the one whose lure was buried in my back was using my rod now, and fighting my fish! Talk about putting salt onto a wound! They both continued to fish and landed one or two more fish each before the school of fished had moved off.

Finally, after about 10 minutes, and more degrading words then one could think to use, they finally put down their rods and decided to get that 5/0 hook out of my back. The hook was way in past the barb, and there was only one way to get it out. We were in my buddy's boat, so we used what was in the boat. The only knife that he had was one of those old folding 8" pearl handled knife that had a saw tooth edge running all the way down the top. He hadn't cleaned or oiled it in 5 years of fishing (in the salt) and it was so rusted, that he had to use a pair of needle nose pliers to get it open. We were tuff then, and took far more risks then we do now. About two minutes later, my buddy had his lure back, and we were back up on plain again looking for the next next school of Corvina. It was great to be young!

Cowlitzfisherman

I was fishing for Pinks two years ago hooking and releasing a ton and as one fish was thrashing around it manged to get the hook under my fingernail. That stung a bit, but it didn't get stuck so I didn't think too much about it.

That was until two nights later when I woke up to an excrutiating throbbing pain in my finger. The next evening I was in the emergency room on IV antibiotics, as the infection had shot up past my elbow, and the doctors thought blood poisoning was starting to set in.

I posted this story of a rogue hook, my bed and me back in Febuary of 2002:


Okay, first of all I was heavily advised against posting this very embarrasing story but now that I look back on it, I think it is quite humerous. Besides, everyone already knows that I manage to do some pretty embarrasing things.

I guess I will doing anything for a little attention and I am sure the story that follows will provide me with plenty.

Eventhough I have a desk that is perfect for tying flies, I still plop my vice down on a pillow on my bed and sit there and tie. Also, my tying materials are in complete disarray. I have yet to discipline myself to put the marabou and hackles and even hooks back into their packaging. I have bins upon bins of loose hooks and tangled messes of tinsels, chenilles, thread and marabou.

Usually when I am done tying, I push all the crap back into the bins but in the process many of the materials just end up on my bed. I either throw them in a bin or throw 'em back on my tying pedestal.

Normally I atleast put the bins back in the little stacker thingamijig that I have but I have been tying many flies every night as of late, so I just threw the bins and crap on the floor and went to bed.

I woke up at about 5 in the morning last night and was just trying to get comfortable again. I was tossing and turning and on one spin to the other side, I felt a deep, penatrating, sharp and painful as Hell feeling in my left buttocks. I reached down to see if I could feel what is was and it was frickin' hook.

Everytime I moved the pain got worse and worse and worse. I tried to sit up to reach at it but the pain was unbearable. It had actually gone through my mattress pad, through my sheet, my boxers and finally into my ass.

I did what I could to get the pain to go away but it wouldn't and I could not, for the life of me, get a good grip on the hook without the pain reaching near screaming mode.

I looked around to see if I could find a pair of pliers to cut it at the shank but there were none around. I tried to reach for my lamp so I could atleast see what I was doing but even that was too much pain to bare.

I was almost at the point of yelling for HELP, but I figured there was a much better way of solving the problem at hand. Last thing I wanted was my sister to walk in and see me stuck to my bed with a hook in my ass, in my underwear.

I hoped that the hook had not gone through the mattress so I began to peel away the mattress pad. Reaching to every corner of the bed involved large amounts of shearing pain but I had to do it. After about 5 minutes I had the mattress pad off and totally wrapped around me, as to prevent it from getting caught on anything which would inturn pull on the hook.

I managed to get up, turn on the light and back the hook out through the pad, the sheet, my underwear and my ass...with not alot of blood lost. What hook had been set into my ass??...a size 1 1/2 Alec Jackson Heavy Wire.

Oh well...hope ya all got a good laugh!!!

when I was a young boy the family lived in Michigan for several years. Dad was working the night shift and we would often go bass fishing after he got off work. Steel casting rod, Winona reels, dacron line, and topwater bass plugs like jitterbugs and fishcakes. These plugs had 4 small treble hooks. To set the stage it's between midnight and dawn, pitch dark, and we're paddling along the lilly pad lines casting to splashes and the noises caused by feeding bass. Dad hooks up, bass jumps and throws the plug, it flies back and sticks in my right eyebrow. Being dark, dad didn't know what happened so he triiied to reel up to re-cast which stuck another hook in my forehead. By then he figured it out and being the hardcore fisherman that he was; he took the pliars and cut the hooks off the plug. Tied on another and fished for another hour.Of course after we were done fishing he took me to the hospital to have the hooks removed. Fast forward to the next year. Same thing only he got my right ear! Boy did I owe the old man! The next year we were fishing and a black water snake crawled over the gunnel nto the floor f the boat. I grabbed a paddle, swung with all my might, missed, and hit dad on the top of his left foot breaking 2 bones. Funny thing was that when that happened we stopped fishing and went to the emergency room right away! We kidded each other for years.
One more: Back in the early 80's at McConnell's boathouse in Mukilteo I was cleaning some silvers when I heard the cart go down the rails to retrieve a boat. I recoganized them as a husband and wife who always fisshed togetther. Before the cart even stopped moving the wife jumped out of the boat, ran out the gate, and locked herself in their truck. We heard her husband yelling all sorts of profanity but couldn't see him. Looked in the bottom of the boat and there he was on the floor laying on thee landing net that had 2 still alive, flopping silvers in it. They had got a double header and netted both fish at once. They were using 5" white Silver Horde plugs (2 treble hooks each). The bite was on so he tried to reach in and get his plug to resume fishing. The fish flopped and buried a treble in his hand. He yelled at his wife to get the fish whacker and stun the fish. Just then the other fish started also flopping burying another treble that was attached to it in his other hand! He was screaming and she swung at a fish, missed the fish but hit him in the head stunning him causing him to fall face first into the net full of fish. He then got a 3rd treble stuck in his cheek! What a sight that was in the emergency room that afternoon! I still remember the looks on the nurses faces as we brought him, the net, and the fish in. Oh, and the marriage survived.

Two years ago I was eating lunch at a set of waterfalls near my house. The Kings were in thick, as were the snaggers. The people were lined up in a corner ripping away. There was a father and son together the kid wasn't fishing but his dad was. Hit rig consisted of a treble and a piece of chartruse yarn. Well after about 5min later the guy goes to take a cast, his kid was standing right behind him, as he started his foward cast he proceeded to hook his kid right in the back. You can imagine the screams that came from a 6yr old kid, I felt really bad for him. The hook was deeply embedded in his back, and an ambluence was called and that was the end of that. Made me quiver quite a bit thinking how bad that hurt.

WOW a lot of these tales have a common final pathway... a trip to the hospital! Here's one more. Be forewarned, this one is not for the weak at heart or stomach... here goes. Remember, I whittle on eyeballs for a living.

Father and 4 yr old son on a nice trout outing to do some quality bonding. Daddy goes to cast junior's hook and bobber, and snags the little one on the backcast going forward.... RIGHT IN THE EYE!

Not near the eye or in the eyelid, but right through the eyeball itself!

Miraculously, after a trip to the operating room and several weeks to heal, I was able to restore his vision to 20/20. Very rewarding case. Unfortunately, the experience left father and son with such a bitter taste that neither has reteurned to the water to wet a line since the incident happened a year and a half ago.

Take home message: combat fisheries are not the only place stray hooks go flying about. If you cast from a boat, chances are you are standing closer to your partner(s) than the guys fishing the mouth of Blue Creek. Wear appropriate eye protection... that means the kids, too. The little ones often have a limited concept of just exactly where in space their body's are, especially within the confines of a small boat.

One more observation....

Seems the majority of these hooking injuries were complicated by burying the barb so deeply that it made eventual removal of the hook much more diffficult and painful....

Makes a very compelling case for going barbless!

ok here goes,
back in my bulletproof days when I thought it wise to drift down the sky in a 12 foot gamefisher(prison on down to snohomish). we were pulling steellee wiggle warts for coho one day and I hooked a dandy and as I was bringing it to the boat yelling "get the net!!!" my fishing partner informed me he had left it in the back of the truck. but "all's ya got's to do is grab that big fish by the head and the tail at the same time and plop 'er in the boat."
so I reach out and place one hand under the head and grab the tail. It almost worked, got the fish about 2 feet out of the water before I lost grip, thats when the front hook on the wiggle wart got stuck in my finger, it went in right before the center of my finger print and tryed to come out the back side of my nail but lucky for me it found the bone first.
so here I am my finger on the front hook the coho thrashing around in the water on the back hook and my partner screaming "don't let go the line broke!!." He stumbles to the back oof the boat grabs the tail and belly and throws the fish and my finger in the boat. then grabs the 2x4 and wacks it a couple of times in the head to make sure it won't get away. finaly he looks at me and says "you can let go now it's dead"

After that he realized what was going on and we took the hook out of the fish and I gave a mighty pull on the hook and nearly passed out from the pain. So he rows to shore, ties up the boat and we hike back to the truck luckly we hadn't gone very far. and it's off to the clinic to get the hook. As he was driveing I kept complaning that the @#$# plug was rattling every time He hit a bump and sending shooting pains up my arm. After a shot of novicaine the doc got the hook out and we went back to fishing.
We got no more silvers that day but I did catch a nice cutthrout later in the day on the same plug we had the net this time. the coho weighed 10 lbs on the clinics scale.

by the way thats why I'm rattlefish.

Out at Neah Bay this summer with a friend from the tri-cities..... slamming coho on 1/0 clouser minnows. My friend hooks a nice fish he thinks is of hatchery origin. I reach down grab and tail it, see the fin and reach to unhook the fish. Just as I am reaching down my buddy leans over to looks for himself. While leaning over the side he is pulling back on his 10 foot 8wt with enough bend to make Jimmy Houston proud. The fish thrashes, the hook pops loose and catapults deep into the knuckle on my pinky. I yell some mild obsenities and say... "it better be barbless" He says "of course it is" WRONG!!! I pull, it doesn't move! I called him a few more obsenities and told him to cut the line. ( He tried to cut it right at the knot so he doesn't waste his leader...which caused me great pain and anguish!!! ) Now I'm calling him far more advanced swear words and I tell him to cut it farther up the line! I ended up using needlenose pliers to twist the hook upside down and pull it out with the barb grinding along the knuckle bone. After About 10 minutes of work, it came free, complete with a chunk of meat attached! I bled like a stuck pig.... cleaned it, put a bandage on it, then puked over the side of the boat! My finger still hurts and its been 5 months!

I am a guide here in AK, I was fishing clients for silvers when we hooked a King, trying to release the king as gently as possible I attempted to remove the quikfish with my needle nose plyers and no net. The fish was hooked on the back treble of the lure while my index finger got hooked on the front hook. There I was attached to a 40+ kenai king over the side of my boat no net or anything. I had a client attempt to rip the hook out which failed. On the third attempt he was able to rip the hook from my finger.
Believe me, it is not a fun experience to be hooked to a king in flowing water and no net around the fish to calm it and contain it! Needless to say it could have been much worse but the King and I survived!

Welcome to the board Yukon. OUCH

Elkrun

I feel your pain …I know exactly how you felt!


Like I said earlier, I have had a couple of hooks stuck in me! The second and worse time was 2 ½ years ago when I was out fishing for late winter steelhead on one of our smaller local rivers. I was teaching a lady friend who owned the property that we were fishing on how to use a bobber and jig. You have never heard anyone yell as loud as her when she hooks a fish! She really gets excited to say the least.

I always let her make the first cast in my favorite stretch of water because the first jig that goes through it, almost always gets the first fish. She made the first cast and then I made mind about 5 seconds later. Sure enough, her bobber went down, and…fish on!

The spot we were fishing has high banks and you need a long handled net to get to your fish. She was screaming so loud that I was concerned that some near by neighbors would think that she was being rapped or being attacked! If you have ever been around this lady when she catches a fish, you would not doubt what I am saying. She won't stop yelling until that fish is either on the bank or it comes off, so I was in a hurry to get that sucker in so that she would stop that blasted yelling. As I pulled my bobber and jig in, and was reaching for my long handled net, my jig (# 2 Oshaughness- 630M) naturally had to wrap around a small lime off an alder tree.

The noise of her screaming was getting to the point of being embarrassing, so I just grabbed the limb and line with my remaining left hand and gave a hard fast jerk, bending downward hoping that the limb was going to just break off. Well you how that one works... it didn't break! The next thing I knew, there was an extruding pain coming from my thumb!

That #2 jig hook had warped around the top of my thumb, and when I jerked on that limb, I drove that hook right into the center of the "knuckle" of my thumb! It went all the way into the straight part of the shank! When that happen I let a couple prime four letter words, and the lady friend heard me and turned around to see what had happen. She went crazy when she saw my thumb, and started screaming "oh god, oh god, what should I do, what should I do". I told her to just land the fish and I would worry about getting the hook out later. I broke off the line and netter her fish and then had to listen to her crying how awful it looked, and she wanted to take me to the hospital and get the hook out.

That wasn't going to happen for two good reasons; 1) my insurance was a $1000 deductible , so that meant that I was going to have to fork out about $200 bucks or more; and 2) I wasn't going to waste the best part of a half day in the doctor's office when fishing was so great! So I knew what I had to do!

I have pulled a lot of hooks out of the "flesh" before, but pulling a barb hook out of "bone cartilage" is a whole other story (just ask elkrun)! The hook was not coming back out the same hole that it went in, so that meant that I was going to have to push it all the way through the Knuckle cartilage and bring it back up through the top of the thumb. The hook would not go any deeper becuase the point was up against the bone! I had never put myself through so much pain in my life before! As hard as I could pull and push with my small pair of needle noses, the hook would not turn upward. Apparently the point was up against the knuckle bone and it would not turn upward. It took me about 5 minutes before I finally seen the point of my hook pope up through the top of my thumb. I was just about ready to pass out from pain when that hook finally broke through the top of my thumb. The rest was a cake walk once the barb had came though, and all it took then was to cut the hook off behind the barb and pull it back out.

Lesion one; never ever sink a hook into a finger joint because it ain't going to come out very easy!

Lesion two; If I were to do it over, go get a shot of "novicain" and spend the $200!

Lesion three; think real hard about the pro and cons of using a babless hook

Cowlitzfisherman

Elkrun, you need some new fly fishin' friends who do punch barbs down.

Me, I've hooked myself 6 or 7 times. Ran some small fly hooks into various fingers, a big #4 leech into a finger past the bend of the hook, ran a #8 into the back of my head while double hauling in the wind. The weight of that 9 wt line hitting me was somethng else.

First two times I got hooked I wondered..."hmmm... did I punch those barbs down?"... and when I tugged on the hook it slid right out.

One of the advantages of fishing barbless about 98% of the time.

Thats what I told him on the way back to the boat launch! He wasn't happy either because the fish were hitting, but I was ticked. I dont like puking in my own boat! CFM is right about pushing a hook through knuckle ligament...worse yet is picking the meat off the hook to show a moron a barb that isn't pinched.....

The worst I every felt about hooking someone was the time my dog got it with 3 trebles.

I was 15 and living in texas doing a lot of bass fishing. I can home from the lake and mom told me to take out the trash. I went to my room and dropped my rod on the bed. I had been fishing a large brokenback rapala with 3 treble hooks for large mouth.

about that time my little brother comes in the front door with the dog from a run and the dog is all wound up. The dog in question loves to run from room to room and jump on our beds, he is also a 180lbs of blue great dane. I have never heard a sound like when the three trebles buried in that dog's front leg and chest.

I have to admitt that mordock (the dog ) never tried to snap at any of us while we held him down and pushed those hooks thru and cut the barbs off. needless to say mordock never jumped on a bed agian.

It s one thing to hook my brother ( both times) or my grand fathers (once each) or one of my friends (lost count) they understand what is happeneing. but my dog only knew that he was hurting and not why ,also that we were the ones hurting him . he died a year later from brain tumors and even though my wife had a dog when we got married I have not gotten one.

A few years ago I walked into my favorite spot on the Dungeness at peak Coho time. To my amazement there was two other guys there, and always being the people watcher that I am, I scanned them and came to the conclusion that they were nothing but a bunch of snaggers. So I proceeded to ask them how the fishing was and if they had seen any fish, of course I already knew that there was a ton of fish in the hole., just seeing if my guess was right, and sure enough they were'nt giving up much conversation. In the next half hour I watched these two knuckleheads snag numerous fish and had enough. So I casually stated that there was no need to snag them and that they would actually hit. My comments went unheard , so under my breath I was kinda thinking about horrible things that could befall these two, then stopped due to my own conscience. Well not another 30 minutes went by when one of them had a fish on(on the back above the tail) and I was again shaking my head in disgust. So they get it close to shore and the one not fighting the fish bends down to grab the fish and the other one is still pulling back on the fish, so just as I look back to take another look, the spoon that is hooked in this fish's back flys out and literally smacks this guy that is bent over right in the face with the loudest smack that I have ever heard. The guy falls down instantly and isnt moving at all, his buddy is freaking out and Im wondering if my evil thinking is to blame. After about a minute the guy moves and his buddy runs to get the truck and I walked over to this guy moaning on the ground and see a huge split above this guys eye ( an inch wide,and 2inches long) where the spoon hit him and also see a huge (3x3in diameter) pool of blood on the rocks. Yes I did want to say something about how this related to not snagging fish, but just couldnt do it. Sorry so long but thats just how it had to be. Never did see those guys again.

My wife and I were fishing with our two young boys (we now have a 3rd son) on Fish Lake by Leavenworth. It was in the middle of a nice sunny day. We had rented a row boat and were using worms trying to catch some perch. My wife was at the back of the boat really focused on trying to catch the really small little perch that were eating her worms but not ever hooking the fish. The boys were using the little snoopy type rods and reels, casting and having fun, when Andy (probably about 6 yrs old) makes a cast and hooks his little brother, Chris (4 yrs old) in the ear and about yanks him out of the boat (either didn't have a drag or it was damn tight). The hook came out during the cast but left a little blood. Needless to say, Chris let out a yell that could be heard for miles followed by a lot of crying (again could be heard for miles). I've seen this type of crying end whatever event was going on before, so I started packing up the tackle box and pulling up the anchor. My wife asked me what I was doing. I told her taking the Chris in to shore and she told me definitely NOT. She was going to catch one of those darn little perch that kept steeling her worms. Like normal, whatever she says, we kept fishing (and I think we caught a few of those little perch too).