I know some of you think it's silly, but I like fishing, so each year around this time I start getting prepared, a ritual that involves cleaning and oiling reels, then re-stringing with fresh line (yes, fishing line can become un-fresh)... cleaning out and re-arranging/re-stocking the tackle box.
This includes buying and admiring shiny new lures and reading the boxes they come in, much like some of you read your cereal boxes at breakfast. Did you know Rapala brand lures ('the original Finnish minnow') are assembled in Estonia? Well you do now! Cereal boxes are boring.
I've had a pile of new lures sitting on one of the couches for days, enjoying them each time I walk by, but today was the day to add them to the tackle box, for the weather is good and IT IS MARCH after all!
Amongst those new ones were two or three of last years' that I had cut off the poles when I was re-stringing, and well, one of those, a 'crankbait' (my favorite type) had become hooked into the fabric.
My girlfriend took note yesterday of the hooked crankbait situation and informed me. Yes, I already knew but am slow sometimes... to resolve such situations.
She fancies herself rather a McGyver type so I challenged her to get it free to which she informed me "you're gonna need some needlenose pliers" which I couldn't find because I am unorganized, hence part of the reason that it remained attached there for several days.
Well today I found those damned pliers!
-- Grabbed the treble hook using the proper tool held in my right hand (two of the three were embedded) and gave a good yank.
They popped out much easier than I expected, yes, the couch was free... or the lure was free. OK, both were free!
But not me.
The rear treble pierced into the palm of my left hand, and it hurt. One of those panic moments when you realize you've done something dumb that causes pain signals in the brain.
Brain to tr ig: "YOU DUMB ASS. Ouch! Now what you going to do genius? You do realize that hooks have what are known as barbs, right, and the only way they can be removed from human flesh is to push the barb on through, then cut the hook and pull the remains of it out, barb first."
To brain: "YES, yes I do. Shut up!"
So I tried doing the opposite. Backing it out. NO WAY NO HOW! But then, took what seemed the appropriate action in such an asinine situation- snapped a picture.
Great blogging opportunity!!
Another pic... gotta include doggie. Right.
Then, totally focused, I did what brain had told me... pulled the hook through to the other side.
THAT took, I'm guessing twenty minutes. I pushed and pulled, like really hard, trying to get it through, my hand skin distended until turning arctic white.
Not only was that painful, to say the least... I was afraid that if I push-pulled TOO hard that the whole thing would just rip out, involving MUCH MORE pain, and probably a hideous scar, but finally the point of the dull hook appeared.
Only ten or so more minutes later, much pressure applied, the barb itself finally popped out.
At that point I was having tunnel-vision.
Then, just another five or ten to get those same needlenosed pliers in a position where I could get the wire cutting portion onto the hook to cut it, without chopping my own flesh.
You may think I'm exaggerating.
No... not. Good timing though, as I was fresh out of blog topics.
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Comments
:D
Larry.. ME TOO. Hate it. Hope not to repeat it. Actually, no small miracle that this was a first... that way
Yes I took my left to dinner after I snagged her!
I swear, my friend, sometimes I think you're dumb as a rock. Why on earth didn't you cut that prong off BEFORE pushing it through?!!!!
And where the heck were your wire cutters? (Sometimes called side-cutters).
Remind me one day to tell you how to safely withdraw a barbed hook without ripping hell out of your flesh; but then, now that you've done it the painful way, you've probably already figured it out - after the fact - as I did right AFTER the first time I 'unhooked' myself by pushing the prong through.
;-)
.
I don't stalk your posts and comments and memorize every letter so I seem to have missed that story. I did go back to check and still can't find it. So sorry.
Told Cup Cake once about the Rooster Tail that got stuck in the top of Mrs.' head. We were two hours away from town. What a trooper. She wouldn't let me take her back because the bite was on. My buddy who had hooked her turned green, jumped out of the boat and decorated the ferns. I told her I'd count to three and take it out. One...two....yank ! (She would have been too tense if I got all the way to three. )Success!! and full stringers. Good times that fishin' stuff.
The thing to remember here dear Trigger is that you survived :D.
Rated for trials and tribulations.
;-)
I do that about once a year, but I make a point of always hooking someone else rather than myself.
Now you know how the poor fishies feel.
aka you... ripped it out of her head... then? Well played!
Sky what up with the 'prong?' It's not in my fishing vernacular, more in my sex vernacular.. although that may be - - an exaggeration, in that regard, in my case
Seeing the sense of barbless hooks today!
And for what it's worth, today, is the first day I've hooked myself or, to my best memory, anyone else... though there is that time our brother that don't blog here caught one in the earlobe on a windy as hell Kansas lake, when I was nine or so.... most of the memory is blocked
Glad to say I only briefly considered cutting off my own hand with the two pound cleaver... that I found on a haunted property.. and still keep. I call it the Bill the butcher... from 'Gangs of New York' but it's more likely Polish because those are the immigrants that 'settled' the area. The house I mentioned was built by, in 1900, what we call now 'Indians' later Slavic, now Hispanic and Cracker mostly.
Am I high?
If I substitute *cosmetics* for *lures* I can *relate.*
he says it's African Grass , I say a piercing... what say you??
Heck, I'd have thought you'd have been more curious as to how to remove that barbed prong from your flesh without pushing it through than in my terminology!
Glad you're OK, though.
;-)
.
Trig, did you at least use anesthesia?
Kim and Rita, I'm assuming by now you read the 'story of the fucking thing in my mouth' in the earlier comments. Rita you may have to pay Kim, but that's my fault because I did say once it was a piercing... anyway, I explained up there^
late 14c., "three times, triple," from O.Fr. treble (12c.), from L. triplus (see triple). The verb is recorded from early 14c. The noun meaning "highest part in music, soprano" is attested from early 14c., from O.Fr. treble; in early contrapuntal music, the chief melody was
in the tenor, and the treble was the "third" part above it (after the alto). dictionary dot com
Aren't words fascinating?
Thanks to all for enduring this post.
I recall a painful piercing of my own - a utility knife to the calf. It was quite the crimson fountain that ensued. Luckily I had a dirty sweat sock handy to tie it off with.
Dammit, that hurts just looking at it.
Huh? ME a pussy? LMAO, ok you've got me pegged in this case...