A friend of mine who runs a small fishing camp has a particular talent he puts to good use several times every summer. He is an expert fishhook remover. Unfortunately, it’s fingers, not fish that he specializes in.
Each year several of his guests, including those from Wisconsin and Minnesota, find themselves in an embarrassing and painful situation. Normally caused by a thrashing northern pike, these anglers show up at my friend’s dock looking for help to remove a barbed treble hook that invariably got transferred from the mouth of a fish into a finger or thumb.
As with Minnesota and Wisconsin, the use of barbed hooks is generally permitted in Ontario where my friend plies his trade throughout the summer months.
Minimizing unnecessary damage to the fish we catch is certainly reason enough for anglers to use barbless hooks, whether required or not. For anglers who aren’t particularly concerned for the well being of the fish, using barbless hooks has a more selfish motivation – minimizing personal pain and avoiding an expensive trip to the local hospital.
The system my friend employs to remove hooks from fingers is quite effective, though crude and extremely painful. He simply takes a sturdy pair of pliers and thrusts the embedded hook all the way through the rest of the finger until the barb breaks the skin on the other side. Sometimes a bone gets in the way and he has to wiggle around it, but eventually he gets the job done. Once the barb is exposed he cuts off the end of the hook and pulls the remaining piece back through the original hole.
Now, for anglers who can’t or won’t subject themselves to the pain, the other option is a trip to the hospital emergency room which usually sets a non-resident back about $500, and wipes out an entire day of fishing – which is the last thing you want when you are on your annual one week fishing trip with the boys.
While you may consider your impaled finger to be a critical injury, the emergency staff are likely to put you at the bottom of the priority list and your blood pressure will certainly rise with every new ER visitor that jumps the queue in front of you. In fact, you’ll be lucky to get back to the camp for dinner.
A hook in the finger seems bad enough, but more serious incidents are not uncommon. Eyes, ears, lips, and private parts have also been snagged by barbed hooks, mostly as the result of a careless fishing buddy. A missed hook-set or a spit bait will also launch a lure into an unprotected area of the body. Obviously, these injuries go beyond the scope of my camp-owner friend’s skills, and I will let you use your own imagination to figure out the end of these stories.
So, in the interest of saving the lives of a few more fish and avoiding an expensive accident on your next fishing trip, take the time to buy barbless hooks or pinch and file the barbs on your existing lures. You may lose the odd extra fish but I would argue that the reduced risks of personal injury more than make up for one or two less fish in the boat.
Special Notes: Barbless hooks are sometimes required in State, Provincial and National Parks, during winter fishing, or in areas where the populations of certain fish species are at risk. The Province of Manitoba requires the use of barbless hooks in all areas.
Andrew Walker is the editor of CottageTips.com. CottageTips.com strives to be a useful and rewarding place for all cottage and cabin owners to find, request, and exchange information about all things related to outdoor living.
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