smallies and hooks in the right and wrong places

[ness]

21 hours ago, MOFishwater said:

 

ALWAYS wear eye protection when you are fishing.

^Yup.

[Jim Spriggs]

Thanks, Al, for those directions.  While I hope not to need them, I suspect they will come in handy one day.  As others described on this post, it could have been much worse for me had I not put my arm up for protection.  I do wear glasses, so I have them going for me (which is nice...)

 

[Al Agnew]

Yep, for a while I wore contact lenses, but realized it made fishing more dangerous, especially night fishing...I had a big Jitterbug zing past my face one night when I had the contacts in, and shuddered to think what might have happened.  For that as much as other reasons I went back to wearing glasses.

I put a half moon divot in the middle of my forehead a few years ago when I hung up a lure with a big worm weight, one of those conical ones, and jerked as hard as I could, and it came back and smacked me just above the eyes.  I saw stars and whole constellations.  If that thing had hit me in the glasses it might have been as bad or worse than a hook hitting my bare eye.

Worst I ever hooked myself, though, was when I hung up a big two treble crankbait in some shoreline brush while fishing by myself in a little local tournament many years ago.  I jerked and jerked and it didn't come free, so I turned to hit the trolling motor switch to go in and get it, and as I did I jerked one more time, real hard.  I felt it come loose, and like a fool I turned to see where it was going, just as it smacked me right where my upper lip meets my nose, burying a barb.  Talk about painful!  The loose line draped all over me.  I looked around, and saw one of the other guys way across the lake.  I knew it would take forever to get over there with the trolling motor, so I made my way back to the outboard, which I had to pull on the rope to get started.  I gave the rope a big pull, and a loop of line that was wrapped around my elbow jerkec the lure as hard as I'd pulled on the rope!  WOW, now that hurt!  I finally got the line unwrapped and got the motor started and went over to the other guys, and one of them pushed the barb on through like a ring in my nose.  Now THAT hurt, too!  He clipped it off and I was finally free.

[ozark trout fisher]

I am glad no one is keeping track of the times I've needed to perform minor, self-surgery while out on the water to remove hooks. And a few times when I was younger those certainly did turn into urgent care trips. The worst was when I got a large topwater lure hung up in a tree while night fishing and it came back at me at 1000 mph. I half expected this result, and covered my eyes with my hand. My eyes were fine but the hand not so much.

It's been stated but sunglasses and a hat can short-circuit some of the worst-case scenarios.

My favorite tale (pun intended), from a person who worked in an emergency room near LOZ, involved two gentleman who sat on a bench that someone had left a very large crankbait on. As the story goes, each of them got one of the two treble hooks embedded in an unfortunate location and it led to perhaps the most awkward ER visit ever. It sounds too good to be true, but I guess you never know.

[MOPanfisher]

Whew I am glad I have never hooked myself.

[dan hufferd]

That is what we call "fixated", and it paid off. Good job !