Hooking Yourself

[N Florida Mike]

When I was 24 I was night fishing a farm pond with a girlfriend and using a spoon with 5/0 hook.I felt a bump and reacted instinctively and jerked .But it was only a few feet out and the spoon came out and hit me in the right eye.I spun around and sat down.I reached up and gently pulled but it was in deep.I cut the line and had to hold the spoon up because it was pulling my eyeball down from the weight of it.We were both kind of in shock.She drove me to one of those acute care type clinics and when the doc saw it he made a face and told me to get to a hospital.Duh!!.

Anyway I was in surgery for 5 hours.The impact of the spoon detached the retina, destroyed the lens and damaged the iris.A doctor who was one of the best in the state did the surgery .He apparently didn't think he could save the eye but tried anyway.He agreed later it was a miracle that the eye was saved.

I just had a recent eye test, and with correction, the eye is now 20-20!.I'm very thankful.

I also got a small hook stuck just like the first post.I just rotated it around and gently pulled it and it slipped out.No sweat- if you've been hooked in the eye nothing else is a big deal!!

[Jar11591]

4 minutes ago, N Florida Mike said:

When I was 24 I was night fishing a farm pond with a girlfriend and using a spoon with 5/0 hook.I felt a bump and reacted instinctively and jerked .But it was only a few feet out and the spoon came out and hit me in the right eye.I spun around and sat down.I reached up and gently pulled but it was in deep.I cut the line and had to hold the spoon up because it was pulling my eyeball down from the weight of it.We were both kind of in shock.She drove me to one of those acute care type clinics and when the doc saw it he made a face and told me to get to a hospital.Duh!!.

Anyway I was in surgery for 5 hours.The impact of the spoon detached the retina, destroyed the lens and damaged the iris.A doctor who was one of the best in the state did the surgery .He apparently didn't think he could save the eye but tried anyway.He agreed later it was a miracle that the eye was saved.

I just had a recent eye test, and with correction, the eye is now 20-20!.I'm very thankful.

I also got a small hook stuck just like the first post.I just rotated it around and gently pulled it and it slipped out.No sweat- if you've been hooked in the eye nothing else is a big deal!!

 

d**n! Reading that makes me want to wear goggles when I fish. That's wild. 

[flyingmonkie]

I read this entire thread... couldn't stop myself... regret every second of it.  Now I've got that weird pain in my "begonias".  Thanks guys.

[drc9805]

Crazy thing is I just searched how to remove a fish hook for some reason several days ago, I just watched a Jimmy Houston episode where his wife had a treble hook past the barb in her arm and he pulled it out with fishing line, and now this thread pops up... I sure hope it's not a sign of things to come!!!

[Cgrinder]

Good one from two Fridays ago. Took this before opening the gap with pliers and clipping the barb. Metal.

[scaleface]

Did it  again . This  time had to visit the ER . Those Berkely Dredgers have some good hooks . I'm going to have to start using pliers to grip fish . What should I get .

[whitwolf]

Goodnight Scale, that's awful. Seeing that makes me want to go purchase a Boga Grip.

[A-Jay]

17 minutes ago, whitwolf said:

Goodnight Scale, that's awful. Seeing that makes me want to go purchase a Boga Grip.

 

I'll admit to getting hooked once ~ ONCE - a LONG time ago.

Since then, every fish hanging on treble hooks gets the Net and / or Boga Grip (or fish gripper) & hooks are removed with a pair of pliers or in my case hemostat type; never my fingers.

A-Jay

[RoLo]

Over the past 65 years of fishing, I managed to hook myself twice.

The first time was saltwater fishing in the 80s, a day pursuing ling & whiting (red hake & silver hake).

At the washdown station, I was yanking rods out of the rod-holders like a madman

and ended up with a hook impaled in my ring finger. The rods were rigged with Christmas tree rigs,

which are like dropshot rigs but with 4 hooks on short dropper lines. My buddy said

"Let's get you a tetanus shot", but I elected instead to tear it out and forget about it (that worked).

 

The second time was just a few years ago, when I ended up with a treble hook in the top

of my index finger. Remembering my experience from about 30 years earlier, I pulled

with all my mite but that dang hook would not tear out. So I pushed the hook until the point

broke thru the other side, cut off the barb with a cutting pliers, then backed out the shank.

In hindsight, neither were big deals.

 

Roger

 

[lonnie g]

just got a treble hook in the inside of my thy this week. thought this is not going to feel good coming out .I didn't feel a thing, one good side of my back trouble I guess.no feeling half the time. still didn't like it anyway.

[scaleface]

I couldnt push this through .I tried . 

[XpressJeff]

Only done it once, pulling a tangled up mess of 4 or 5 rods out of a boat when a floppy rod with a Mepps snagged, popped loose and caught my forearm. Pushed it through, cut it off and all is well!

[RPreeb]

I've never done it to myself, but reading this thread has made me even more determined than ever to be super careful.  Just looking at some of those photos makes my queasy.  

 

When we were kids I was fishing for sunfish off our dock in Wisconsin when, unbeknownst to me, my cousin came out on the dock behind me just as I was winding up to cast.  I was fishing with bobber and worms, and I hooked him in the corner of the mouth just as if he was a fish.  I think he was almost more bothered by the worm squirming around in his mouth than he was by the pain.  My aunt took him to the doctor to have it removed.  He was about 10 and I was 12 at the time.

[N Florida Mike]

I won't tell about my hook in the eye ordeal again,but it's amazing that in 40+ years of fishing I've only been hooked 2 other times. I got a small bream hook in my pinky toe by the nail and just rotated it around and the hook just came out.I just got a circle hook in my foot a couple weeks ago and pushed it on through, but couldn't cut it in half.So I put pressure on the hook and cut the skin right down the shaft of the hook until it popped out. It was going to come out very one way or the other,'cause I was going fishing the next day but not by way of the E.R.

But after getting the hook in my eye those 2 episodes didn't bother me that much...

[papajoe222]

It's beginning to be a yearly ritual for me, three years running. Twice last year andonce this  year already. The last four times I popped the hook out, or had someone at the launch do it for me. It freaked one guy out so much, he pulled rather than giving the loop a quick pop. He got it right the second time. Each time I was back fishing in no time. I now carry a loop of 60lb. braid in my on board first aid kit. I also started using a gripper to hold the fish when unhooking trebles. 

 

[frosty]

Well I finally got hooked... caught a dink on a jerkbait, he thrashed and drove the other hook into my middle finger tip. Luckily his thrashing got him off the hook, but still left me hooked up. I backed it back out, I couldn't pop it through, and I didn't want to cut the hook since that jerkbait had been money for me! Now I make sure my pliers are near me whenever I've got a treble hook lure on. 

[NHBull]

In the very near future, I am going to really have to pay attention to bleeding, but that's another story.  This year all trebles gets a net, lip groups and pliars.

 

Also carry small bolt cutters and med kit that includes rubber 3m electric tape.

 

I fish by myself 80% of the time...

[XpressJeff]

We're not 17 any more Bull!

 

It sucks, but it sure beats the alternative!

[LxVE Bassin]

I feel better about myself now. I hook myself atleast 10 times a year.

[JustJames]

On 6/22/2017 at 5:01 PM, scaleface said:

Did it  again . This  time had to visit the ER . Those Berkely Dredgers have some good hooks . I'm going to have to start using pliers to grip fish . What should I get .

Call me a chicken **** but I have 3 grippers one boga grip style for boat, one 9" plastic gripper for kayak and one 6" rapala gripper when I walk around bank fishing. If this happened to me (knock on wood) my wife would stop me fishing for good.

 

Another reminder stop pulling snag lure especially with mono or copolymer line, those things with come straight at you like torpedoed.

[MickD]

On 6/3/2016 at 2:56 AM, OCdockskipper said:

A couple of weeks ago, I hooked myself for only the second time ever (the first was over 35 years ago).  

I typically am pretty cautious when handling fish caught with lures featuring multiple treble hooks, but I must have been a little sleepy when the 4th cast of the morning resulted in a bass inhaling my Pop-R.  I brought him to the boat, I reached down & lipped him and started to lift him.  As I did, he shook and drove one of the trebles into my left thumb.  I pinned him down to stop him from moving, unbuttoned him & released him (I could swear I heard him giggling as he hit the water).  I looked at my thumb expecting to see a bloody mess, but instead found the treble had slid between my thumbnail and the cuticle, past the barb of the hook.  No blood and as I suddenly realized, no pain.  I removed the treble hook from the lure and attempted to manipulate the hook back out.  Unfortunately, the nail bed prohibited me from the "hook pop" trick for removing hooks embedded in more meaty parts.  I could turn the hook 90 degrees in either direction, so that the point was either under the nail bed or pressed up against the outside of the thumb.  I figured the best bet was to create an exit hole & pop it back through.

As I thought about it more, I guessed popping it back through would make it bleed and cause some pain where I thumb the spool on my baitcaster.  It wasn't even 6 am yet and I didn't want to ruin a whole day of fishing, so I made an executive decision.  I cut the treble so that about a 1/2" of the hook was exposed through the nail.  With that done, I had complete mobility with my thumb, no pain and a way to still remove the hook later.  I stayed out on the water until about 3 pm with no effect on my casting or reeling, although I did land the rest of my fish left handed.

When I got home, I started to manipulate what was left of the hook to poke it through, but chickened out.  I drove over to an urgent care center, they numbed the thumb up and backed the hook out without damaging the nail bed.  Once the hook was out, you couldn't tell one was ever in there.  No blood, no entry mark, it was as if nothing had ever happened.  There was a little swelling that evening from the trauma of backing the hook out, but by morning it was as good as new.  

The positive was that it renewed my focus to pay attention when landing fish with multiple trebles hanging out of their mouth.  I know some folks look at this as a reason to smash barbs or not use trebles, but once every 35 years is a pretty fair track record, especially considering it was completely avoidable and only happened due to a moment of carelessness.

Any one else have an interesting self hooking story?

 

Here is what it looked like after I cut it and continued to fish.

It is my opinion that the method you chose not to use would have worked fine.  The barb would have been pre-loaded away from the nail.  1.  Pinch the other two barbs down.  2.  Put the loop of heavy  line under the imbedded hook.  3. Press lightly on the middle of the two exposed hooks.  4.  Jerk the line very fast and hard, don't chicken out.

 

Some think that this method works only for small hooks, but it will work with pretty large hooks.  I used it in Canada on a 2/0 spinnerbait trailer hook and it worked fine.  No pain, no problems afterward.

 

Of course the surest thing to do is to take it to urgent care.  But as you point out, that is sometimes really inconvenient.   The biggest mistake one can make is to cut the hook off too close to the skin.  You did well by cutting it off well out from the skin so the cut-off end couldn't get covered with flesh.  I would have even tried for a little more distance.

[frosty]

4 hours ago, MickD said:

.  Jerk the line very fast and hard, don't chicken out.

I chickened out once. Holy mother of God was I sorry I did!

[fishwizzard]

I have yet to hook myself badly, but I had a nice little close call the other week.

 

 

It was my first outing with a heavy rod, went to set the hook and launched the toad back at me.  It went through my pants and gave me the the tiniest little poke.  

[scaleface]

14 minutes ago, Bunnielab said:

I have yet to hook myself badly, but I had a nice little close call the other week.

 

 

It was my first outing with a heavy rod, went to set the hook and launched the toad back at me.  It went through my pants and gave me the the tiniest little poke.  

 

LOL , my nickname is Hose .You came close to being Splinkler Hose .

[Kyhokie]

Im sure if we could ask a Bass, they would say Hooking yourself is no big deal. Just give it a few days, it will definitively rust out. ???