I was in the Putnam County Hospital a couple weeks ago and there was a young boy sitting in the emergency room. I didn’t notice until his name was called that he had a Rooster Tail fishing lure hanging from his fingers and obviously from what I could see, the treble hook on the lure was embedded in his fingers. I didn’t have a chance to talk to him to find out what happened.

Over the years, I have seen several anglers with hooks embedded in various parts of their body. The worst of those instances occurred when an angler fishing with me in a tournament gave a hefty jerk when he hung his fishing lure on a log. When the lure came loose, it flew back toward him and impaled one of the treble hooks in his lip.

The hook was embedded deeply and he was in real pain. I could see no easy way to remove it so we headed to the emergency room where they removed the hook, treated the wound and gave him a tetanus shot. He suffered no ill effects other than a hefty medical bill and a swollen lip.

A few years later during another tournament, I saw an angler with an embedded treble hook in his forearm. He didn’t want to leave the tournament but was all set to go an emergency room when another angler fishing in the same tournament told him he thought he could safely remove the treble hook. The angler with the hook in his forearm was not real comfortable with the idea but agreed to allow the other angler one chance to remove the hook.

The angler took a piece of fishing line and looped the line around the shank of the hook, applied downward pressure to the bard under the skin and gave a yank. The barb came out cleanly with no problem. He did suggest however that the angler might want to go to the emergency room and get a tetanus shot, which he did later that night.

Those two situations where anglers got hooked with their own lures have remained with me all these years and when I saw that young boy in the emergency room, I was once again reminded about the pain and problems that can be caused by an embedded fish hook.

Well guess what! Last week, I personally had my first experience with an embedded fish hook in my own body. I was fishing alone and using a crankbait with which I was catching largemouth, hybrids and striped bass. I had netted several fish but each time the fish and crankbait became tangled in the net so I then decided to bring the fish to the boat, lip the fish and then remove the crankbait with my pliers.

That turned out to be a bad idea. I caught a three-pound striped bass and lifted the fish into the boat. A three-pound striped bass is very strong and as I reached for the pliers to remove the treble hooks from the striped bass, the fish jumped and embedded the front treble hook into my left thumb. The pain was tremendous and instinctively I dropped the pliers and grabbed the jumping fish with my other hand.

That was not a good idea either and resulted in the other treble hook on the crankbait embedding itself slightly in two fingers of my right hand. Here I was with both hands tied together with a three pound jumping striped bass and two treble hooks. For a moment I didn’t know what I was going to do because I could not even maneuver my hands to crank the boat and nobody was within sight.

After several attempts at shaking the lure, I finally managed to get my right hand free from the other treble hook and then held the fish down with my knee. I took my fliers and cut the hook away from the crankbait leaving the shank of the hook sticking out of my thumb with the barb deeply embedded. I got rid of the fish and the crankbait and turned my attention to the barb that was embedded in my thumb.

I tried a couple of very painful yanks with my pliers to remove the hook with no success. I then thought the best thing to do was to go to the emergency room and let them remove the hook but I remembered the technique the guy used years earlier to remove the hook from that angler’s forearm.

I took a piece of fishing line and looped it around the hook shank, pressed down on the barb under the skin and yanked. Amazingly, the bard came straight out and did not tear any tissue. I had taken a recent tetanus shot so with the hook now removed, I cleaned the wound with clean water and wrapped the thumb with a piece of clean cloth to stop the bleeding and went back to catching fish.

I’m not suggesting that any angler attempt to remove an embedded fish hook as I did, but there are several techniques in addition to the one I used that can be used to remove a hook. There is an article on a website by the organization American Family Physician (www.aafb.org/afb) that describes the different procedures that can be used to remove fish hooks. Go to that website and search on “fish hook removal.”

If you accidently hook yourself and the fish aren’t biting, you might just as well go to the emergency room. However, if the fish are biting, you might want to attempt removing the hook yourself. Good fishing and see you next week.

Bobby Peoples can be reached at brpeoples@windstream.net.