I got a finger fillet scar from preparing a fish for the smoker when it slid while I was cutting it. A good lesson on why you should wear a cutting glove on your non knife hand.

I have a friend who took a piece of pencil lead dead smack between the eyes at eyebrow level. Knocked him on his ass...hehe He was lucky to just have blood running down his nose.
Guy I worked with lost his eye to a circle hook on a long liner up in Alaska.

When ever I catch a tree on the other side of the river I always turn away when breaking off to save my eyes. Been hit with lots of swivels and lead that hurt like hell for a the duration of the ouchieee dance.



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Marty
Steelheader.net marty@steelheader.net

So we were ice fishing in Northern Minnesota. My best friend and I had just made it out to the fish house early in the morning. Gotta get dat early start don't ya know.
Well, to keep the story short i'll just say this...wet hands, metal ice chisel, and 28 degrees below zero. Put these together and you have one hand now firmly attached to a chisel handle and by buddy screaming in pain.
The best part is the about the only way to get unstuck w/o tearing off several layers of skin is to warm the handle up somehow. Well, all we could do was to blow on his hand with our hot breath. I don't think I was a lot of help as it's pretty hard to blow air out of you mouth when you are laughing hysterically.


Duke

Bob - Speaking of scars, how is your hand doing?

Don't ask me how I did it, but I managed to tail hook a 35lb. Kasilof King in Bob's Boat. I think I deserve a prize, or something! Anyways, Bob attempted to tail the fish. Apparently the girl didn't like to have her tail grabbed (heh) and took off - leaving a hook in Bob's hand.

As a small kid, I managed to hook my grandpa in the back of the hand with a Royal Wulf fly. He had me cut the hook out of his hand as he held the fly. I'm still traumatized by that even today. I'm really damn careful around fishing gear - probably always will be.

Parker

[This message has been edited by parker (edited 08-21-2000).]

Parker ... that one doesn't even show anymore. But either I'm a klutz (a very real possibility) or I fish way too much and have four very prominent ones:

right hand: about three years ago I was trying to unhook about a three or four pound king jack from a K-15 with a long-nosed set of pliers. Needless to say, fish thrashed just right and put one of the 2/0 trebles' hooks completely through the lowermost joint of my pinkie finger with fish thrashing on the other end. Result? Fish flew many, many feet through the air and hook remained in my finger until I cut off end and pulled it back out. Nearly had two customers vomit and had to pull over as I was awfully lightheaded myself. Now a have a permanent reminder of that fish.

right hand, again: wading upper Sauk in summertime, slipped and fell on a mossy rock and broke my fall on a not-so-moosy one. Opened up a two-inch gash on my right hand that bled profusely. Scared the heck out of a woman in the ER that thought I had been on a knife fight as I went into the ER soaked in blood and still had fillet knife on my hip on my belt with much of my blood stining khaki pants around it. Scar is pretty noticable to this day.

End of nose: fishing upper Elwha about ten years ago and sat down on a rock to cut off treble on spinner to replace it with a single. In the process, a bee decide to string me on the back of the nest and as I threw my hand back and up instinctively, I forgot to let go of spinner and planted two prongs of the hook fully into my nose. Could not get thee out so decided to hike out to have it removed. Lots of chuckles from hikers I passed on the way out and a permanent hole in my nose.

Bridge of nose: closest call with serious injury. Frenzied effort to cut yarn with dull knife resulted in a bad slp that put the knife across the bridge of my nose with lots of force. Needless to say, the knife was plenty sharp enough to cut skin and did quite a number. A very easily seen reminder of my fishing bum status.

I'm sure I'll have more, goes with the territory!

This year trolling the spark plug in area 1. Trying to release a coho that a trailer hook came completely trough my for arm skin. A perfect pierce with the fish still flopping next to the boat. Stretched my skin about and inch and a half. Thank goodness for sticky shark barbless hooks, an easy back out. Small scar but looked cool with the skin stretched.

Being from Minnesota, if you get stuck to metal when ice fishing just pee on the item. Ya, its gross at first but the warm liquid will loosen it right up and save a lot of skin. (use urin only in emergency) he he