the past-the-barb fishing accident thread

I don't  have any photos of self-hooking incidents.  My only really bad one happened when I was not even fishing, but going grouse hunting...I had taken off in my truck with my old hound dog Goblin, leaving the cabin and headed to go walk some logging roads looking for a a flush.  I had my musky combo rigged up with a giant Suick or Pig or some other crazy huge jerk bait in one of those "rod holders" that stretch across your vehicle's ceiling.  Well, half mile up the road a grouse flushes in front of the truck and my dog sees it and jumps around all crazy barking from the back seat. In the process, he gets one of those 47/0 trebles pierced right through the base of his floppy ear.  So he's freaking out and jumping around and squealing and I didn't want him to hurt himself further and I grab him and chuck him in the front seat. In the process, I get one of the hooks jabbed into my pinky finger right to the bone.  I'm attached to the dog and the lure, and blood is flowing.  Well, I laid on the horn until finally after 20 minutes or so my brother Corey heard me and came upon the scene.  He had a bolt-cutter and quickly freed the damn dog (who was forever grateful), but a huge treble remained in my little finger.  Being a semi-professional guitar player at the time, I didn't want to risk nerve damage in my finger and went to the ER to get it removed and get a tetnaus shot.

On the way back from the hospital on the logging roads, we ran across a pair of wood ducks and Corey and I shot them for dinner...

I don't have any pictures, but my worst hook inflicted injury happened when I was a kid. I was fishing for pike with a spoon. As I was making one particular cast, I hooked some willows behind me. On the forward motion of the cast, the spoon nailed me in the back of the head, burying the barbed treble hook past the bend. It essentially stapled the hat I was wearing to my head. That one took a trip to the hospital where they had to make an incision in my head to get it out.

I don't have any pictures of this either. Getting sliced up by pike is a regular occurence for me, but 8 years ago one particular fish got me a little worse than normal. It was about a 40 incher, and when I was attempting to remove the hook, the fish thrashed and buried one of its teeth into the inside of my thumb. Lots of blood, yadda yadda yadda. A couple of hours later and I had to quit fishing because my thumb no longer would bend and my whole hand was in pain. I never did see a doctor, but for about a year I could only bend my thumb about 50% and it made a clicking noise. I still occasionally have problems with it.

While not too gruesome, I do have a couple of pictures for this one. Now, I've handled a thousand channel catfish, bullheads, and stonecats over the years. Never once have I been pricked by any of them. Then I go to Florida, and the first hardhead catfish that I catch jabs me in the palm of the hand.

I take a few pictures as this is my first of the species, and then release the fish. Moments later I start to feel a pain and throbbing unlike any other fish inflicted wound I've ever had. I suck it up and keep fishing, afterall there are all kinds of lifers to be caught out on this flat. I immediately hook another hardhead catfish. This time I think I'll be more careful and not even handle the fish. So I grab ahold of the jig in an attempt to turn it and shake the fish off back into the water. I'm not used to fishing with barbed hooks, and instead of the fish dropping off with minimal effort, it starts to flop around, and in the process, buries a pectoral fin spine into my finger below the knuckle. Fuck... The spines are serrated. I can't believe this. I start to get anxiety, knowing how bad it hurts from the first jab, and now it happens again, this time with the fish still attached to me. There was no way that it looked like it was coming out, so one of the guys I was fishing with grabbed a knife, and then proceeded to start sawing this fish's pectoral fin off. I'm anticipating a trip to the hospital to get this thing removed from me. Then all of a sudden it just releases. The spine is out of me, and the fish still has all of his fin (for the most part) intact. Now the real fun begins. Intense pain, throbbing, tingling, numbness, coldness, and a shooting pain down my arm. I can't bend my fingers or grasp onto anything. 

I pop some Benadryl and sit it out for a while. An hour later and I'm feeling nice and relaxed. The anxiety goes away, and the other symptoms eventually subside just in time to throw some topwater for barracuda. 

I haven't been through anything as dramatic as you guys, haha, but once I was fishing with a Berkley 'Flicker shad' and it got stuck in a snag. I gave it a good strong tug and it flew out of the water so fast I couldn't react. Those super sharp treble hooks Berkley uses went straight into my knucke. And I mean IN my knuckle... inbetween the joint. 

And of course I didn't have a pair of cutters of any sort with me. I got down on my knees and pulled that sucker out with all my strength to the point the hook straightened out before it came out of my knuckle. Holy hell that hurt and gave me the 'heeby jeebies' like you wouldn't believe. Thinking about it now even nauseates me. 

In hindsight I should've gotten it taken out professionally but it's hard to stay calm when something is stuck in a bad place and you are out on a river alone... haha.

Ick, my wife says she is just waiting for a call from the emergency ward telling her that I have been stuck and bit. Knock on wood it has never happened yet. 

On the subject of Pike a buddy of mine was camping on an island near Ottawa last summer with family when he got a slight bite froma pike. He washed it out and did not think twice about. At night the wound started to swell and turn red, he got a high fever. The next morning they were stuck but becasue the weather was too bad to boat out. He got tot he emergency room the next day. His arm was swollen with due to blood poisening to just above the elbow and they had had him on mega-dose antibiotics.

I have been stuck by bullhead and catfish manytime but nothing more than a quick puncture and sting but I came across this video about a year ago. Sorta of a girls gone wild fail video if you ask me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M16iNEH-3kc

Hahahahahahaha Zippy, I can't stop laughing at that video and ALMOST feeling bad about it........I know how much it hurts, but how stupid can you BE?

I don't really have any injury stories. I got stabbed by a Bullhead in the webbing between my thumb and forefinger, and that hurt for two or three days. Much worse than a bee sting.

The worst ones from my past:

2013 - tripped with a friggen quick strike rig attached to the rod...

2011 - I caught a rod top or slinky sinker (not sure exactly which) to the eye while trying to land a stoopid rainbow troot that my wife had hooked.  Bugger jumped, tossed the hook, and I caught something at mach 10 with my eye - stupid troot, stupid extra fast jigging rods.  Did have an excuse to wear a rad eye patch for a while:

That's what happens to stupid people lol

That's like seeing a car accident and saying "that's what happens to stupid people lol"........It's just something that happens dude.

My bad. I forgot that such hilarity was posted in this thread- of course he was referring to the video. Sorry.

I've had my fair share of fishing injuries, sadly. Probably the worst was catching a very small Yellow Bullhead at the local lake and having almost its entire left pectoral spine jammed into my finger. And any bullhead fisherman knows that while adult bullhead spines are razor sharp and mildly poisonous that juvenile spines are like chemically sharpened needles dipped in acid that feels worse than a bee sting for several hours. Other than that I've been sliced by sharp dorsal fin rays, bitten my walleye and big trout because I forgot forceps, stabbed with hooks close to having the barb go under my skin, and several other things. Luckily I inherited my pap's fishing skills but not so much his carefulness lol.

ER in Dryden Ontario has a wall of shame:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/fish-hooks-dryden-hospital-1.4248261

The worst one I had happened when I was trying to release a smallish bullhead and it flopped and stabbed me five or six times. That sucked. Tied for second place are the two times I've been bitten by toadfish. I know they aren't very big and I know the teeth aren't very impressive, but holy CRAP does that hurt. I've never had any really nasty ones with hooks, but if ever I do I'm certainly not going to Dryden to have it pulled out.

     This isn't as bad as a lot of yours but here's what happened to me last year: Trying to unhook a nice rainbow trout, I got the treble hook of my mini crankbait stuck into my thumb past the barb. Unfortunately, the hook was also still attached to the trout. I had to hold onto the fish tightly with both hands to keep it from thrashing and wrenching the hook around in my thumb.

     I used a nearby branch to dislodge my knife from its sheath, picked it up in my teeth, and cut the trout's gills, then cut off the part of the jaw that had the hook in it. Now that I could use my other hand, things got easier. I packed up the fish to take home, and rode home with the lure hanging from my finger. Once I was there, I removed the hook from the lure, then I cut the embedded hook off from the rest of the treble. I dissolved a camping iodine tablet in a quarter cup of water and soaked my thumb in that for a little bit. Then I got some pliers and forced the hook through the rest of the way. Thankfully it only went in the side a little bit.

     Once it was out, the wound healed up very nicely, no infection. I still keep the hook today. The trout turned out great too so how mad could I really be?