Hobie Cat Forums

A recent mishap with a ladyfish hooking one of our members in a finger after he first hooked the ladyfish reminded me of the recent article in GAFF Magazine (May-June, 2007) by one of our former Florida State University pre-med students, Paul Hart, MD. Although nearly all such hookings of humans are strictly accidental, Dr. Hart PURPOSELY hooked himself to test a couple of the suggested remedies for hook removal-OUCH! I know, I know, but sometimes you just have to steel yourself to getting past the GAFF chick pics!

1. Here is the first pic that caught my attention (or mebbe it was the 12th, but no matter). This shows Dr. Hart with a self-hooked treble on a plug--more about this one later.



2. This pic shows Dr. Hart self-inserting two new Gamagatsu J-hooks side by side for a comparison of the “snatchâ€

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Ouch!

When I got a treble imbedded in my thumb last year I was sure glad to have a PEDALING kayak. I was fishing alone and there is no way I could have paddled all the way back to the ramp.

Here is what I did:

- Took a Motrin to cut down the swelling.
- Drank a beer to stay calm.
- Iced the ares to cut more of the swelling down.
- Backed the hook out.......... the barb was mostly crimped down.
- Poured antiseptic on the wound.
- Went back to fishing.

Now, I make certain that all of the barbs are flattened.

Nothing more fun than looking at the treble-hooked crankbait embedded in my leg after a SDR from a nice bass. It didn’t hurt much but now I had a series of real problems aka challenging opportunities.

1. I was not going to the weigh-in wearing this kind of “jewelry.â€

Hey Don,
Great tale--thanks for sharing. I figured that a single person could do the snatch method on him- or herself, but you're the first person I know who actually performed the operation on himself and made it work. Good going!
Best,
Dick

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Ouch..that made my spinc+=r tingle just looking at the photos
..........Kepnutz

I was fishing alone on Cape Romano from the beach. Second cast of the early morning caught a 24" snook. Trying to release the fish, I got the front treble hook in my finger. For 10-15 seconds or so, I had a thrashing 5# snook on one end of the lure and me on the other. I managed to get the snook unhooked and released. Then I tried to figure out what to do. I was alone with a sea kayak so no way to get back to civilization. I could not get my leatherman wire cutters in close enough to cut the hook, which ruled out the push through method. I couldn't use the jerk method, even if I could remember how to do it. So, I had to use the, shall we call it, "the slow pull method." Actually, it probably should be called "the slow, power-pull method." My first attempt was not successful. I think the skin in your hands is particularly tough. With no other option, I had to pull harder (more power!) I did and at some point, pulling as hard as I could with my leatherman pliers, it popped out.

I actually became something of a self-taught (translate stupid) expert in the method. Later the SAME day, unhooking a ladyfish, I imbedded another front hook in another finger. It took me less than a 2 seconds to figure out what I needed to do.

After that I spent about an hour taking off all the front hooks on my plugs. The whole day's lesson was "The rear hook is for the fish; the front hook is for you."

Keith

Hey Keith,
Your method, although it worked, sounded fairly painfull! Your idea of removing the front trebles will work obviously, but if the barbs are mashed flat on the front set, and 2/3 of the hooks on the rear trebles that should also work pretty well. In fact, some folks are of the view that flattening the barbs actually increases their number of hookups since the barbless hooks seemed to penetrate the lips more easily. Course, you probably need to keep more of a steady pressure on during retrieval in order to keep the fish from throwing the hook/lure with the flattened barbs, especially at boatside.

And yeah, lots of folks have reported getting hooked courtesy of those @#$%& ladyfish, so that is one fish to be very wary of when removing hooks. Using two hands, with a fish cloth around the head and body of the ladyfish during hook removal is definitely a good idea.

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