Ouch again!

Two summers ago I wrote about getting a treble hook though my finger that I was not able to remove. You can see the original story at Ouch! For the last few weeks stripers have been taking surface poppers very well. Making for some very exciting fishing. There is nothing like a five to ten pound fish grabbing a lure off of the still early morning water surface. There is usually a loud splash and a large swirl. I have been starting almost every trip with at least one line using a popper. The poppers usually have a couple of treble hooks that I think are needed to catch fish that are sometimes only swirling at the lure.

I have been being very careful around all of those hooks. Last Friday my luck ran out though in almost the same scenario as two years ago. The fish was slightly larger than my clients had been catching and it came quickly to the boat. I asked the young woman to let it swim for a minute to tire a little before I handled it. Even so when I reached down the fish shook his head and drove one of the treble hooks through the back of my hand. Luckily it came right through the skin again making it simple to clip off the end of the hook using the plies I had purchased and put into my tool box for that purpose, on the way home from the doctors office. I had the client take the fish off of the other hook and then reached into my toolbox where I had the pliers waiting, cut the hook and went right back to work. Not painless but pretty close. I guess I did learn a little something two years ago! Now maybe I can work on learning not to get those hooks in my hands in the first place!