This thread is reminding me why I almost ALWAYS pinch the barbs down on my hooks. It not only makes it easier to release fish but it saves your own skin more often than not!
One time I got a fly stuck in my finger tip and ended up cutting it out with a dull steak knife. The thought still makes me cringe!
Alan… I’m sorry about your daughter. I have two myself and I can’t even think about how I would feel if I lost one of them.
FM
Alan,
I too am very sorry to hear about your loss. I couldn’t bare to lose one of my two daughters either. My heart goes out to you.
I have another true story. I had been making some repairs on the boat in preparation for the new season after ice off. I told my wife that we were going to hurry up to Jordanelle and test it out. The weather was threatening so I was in an extra hurry. I was grabbing poles and tackle boxes and everything else I could think of, including a fillet knife in case we caught anything. I had a whole arm load of this gear and was walking through the apartment when the fillet knife slid out of the sheath. I was not wearing any shoes yet and as I hustled through the living room I felt something hit the top of my foot with a stinging sensation, and then it felt like kicked something. I saw my razor sharp knife fly across the floor. “Huh oh, that wasn’t good”, I thought. I put the gear down at looked at my foot. Already my sock had a drop of blood soaking through right near the base of the two biggest toes. I took off my sock and opened the wound to see how bad it was. It was pretty bad. I quickly hobbled into the bathroom and put my gushing foot into the tub to save the carpet. I held my foot in cold running water. My wife had missed all of this because she was outside taking out some trash. When she came back in she couldn’t understand why I would be taking a shower at a time like this, us being in such a hurry and all. I called her to the bathroom without sounding alarmed(I wanted to freak her out). I told her to look in the tub which by now was full of very bloody water. It worked, she freaked. After a while the bleeding slowed. It was a real hard decision but I finally decided that I better get stitches instead of heading to the lake. It was a good thing because the doc said that I had in fact filleted a small part of my foot under the skin. The hole in the skin was small, but when I kicked the knife across the room it had twisted and filleted under the skin. My wife freaked again when the doc lifted up the skin to look inside the hole. My wife, with a pale face, said, " I could see your meat". Within a few days the blood had seaped under my skin clear to the back of my heel. I never did make to the lake that day.