Not sure what happened today. The water was green and almost calm. I was fishing with live shrimp and crocker. On my third cast I got a solid bite and then shortley after the accident happened. As I was trying to take the hook out of the 23 inch trout it all went bad. The hook flew out of the trouts mouth and went deep into my hand tearing into my flesh. At this time I decided to get my knife out so I could cut it out. I will now be going to the doctor this Tuesday for a bad infection. Please do not try what I did. I will post pictures later.

I'm not sure I can stomach a picture of that!! Funny thing is that the same thing happened to me a couple years ago. I was fishing the surf in POC when I asked my buddy if he had ever hooked himself. I told him I always had seen guys at the dock with a hook stuck in their hand and never knew how that could happen. That same day I was kayaking the surf when I caught a very large skipjack on topwater. I got him in and saw the hooks were in deep. I forgot my pliers back on the boat. I got the first treble out but the 2nd was deep in the fish's throat. He looked dead so I decided to stick my fingers in his mouth to shake the hook loose. Big mistake!! He went crazy and one of the loose barbs went into the bone of my index finger! I had the fish flapping around while the hook was inside my index finger! I couldn't get it out so I decided to yank real hard. Basically everything went white. After a couple of minutes the pain started to go away. We then left and went on to mule slough. We just got into our kayaks when i hooked another skipjack. This time the skipjack jumped up and the topwater came screaming back to me. It hit me right between the legs and all of the hooks went into my shorts. I was terrified to see what happened. Thank God it just pierced my shorts and nothing else. I decided to keep fishing sinced I was seeing reds all over the place. I caught about 15+ reds when I came across 2 reds tailing. I caught the first one but couldn't get the 2nd to bite. I decided to switch lures to see if i could get it him to bite. I was in a hurry so i just put the topwater I was previously using between my legs in the kayak. I grabbed the small tackle box to throw it in the back of the yak when i realized the topwater had been hooked into the tackle box and my calf!!! I couldn't believe it. I had my tackle box hanging from my leg. The hook was all the way to the back of the hook into my calf. I kept trying to pull it out but it wouldn't budge. So i decided to do one big yank. I got it out plus a little flesh. After that i decided I should leave all the tailing reds and head back to the boat. Karma was not on my side that day!

No bueno! I've heard that squeezing down on the barb with pliers while it is in your hand and then backing it works....luckily I haven't had to try this one yet. I'm sure I will at one point or another.