Life at the Lake

OUCH, STUNG

In my finger, no less

305

It was a fly hook very much like this one, but I had attempted to debarb it, apparently unsuccessfully, for I drove it into the end of my first finger, with a sharp stab. Of course I went to pull it out, knowing all the while the barb stubb had caught, which it had.

So I cut it off my leader and gathered up a few random implements I hoped would be surgically useful, and shouted for my wife to come, give me a hand. And then it dawned on me a simple trick I had read about, over and over again, all my life:

You take some surgical sutures and loop them around the bend of the hook; then you push down on the eye of the hook and lift up sharply and undeniably. The hook pops right out.

Yeah!

Among my tools were some small needle-nosed piers. Just in case.
My wife approached and the phone rang. She got it. I dashed to the basement, holding my wounded paw in the air.

Where would I find sutures, or their equivalent? I thought of flyreel backing. But most of my flyreels were full of casting lines. I found one quickly, however, cut off some of the 30-lb dacron backing, and hurried upstairs. My wife was just getting off the phone.

I explained the untried, famous suture technique to her. She listened to me with her sweet little upturned face. She nodded comprehension. I handed her the makeshift sutures. She picked up the needlenosed pliers.

I looked at her incredulously.

"What are the pliers for?" I asked nicely.

"To remove the hook," she replied.

"No, no," I argued. "We are going to use the suture technique." Thought of the pliers made me weak in the knees.

I again (very patiently, I thought) explained the suture technique. She looked doubtful. I explained it for the third time.

"You sure it will work?" she asked.

"Put down the pliers," I suggested.

She did, and we executed the famous untried plan. It was I who pushed down on the eye of the upturned hook, she who held the strings.

Twice I repositioned the two sutures until they were pointing straight up in the air, and not backward.

"Ready?" I asked. I pressed down. "Now, jerk."

She did and the hook came out cleanly, with no pain at all. Without effort. I squeezed the tiny hole until a drop of blood appeared. I did it again. A clean wound.

All done, and how simple it was. Why had I ever worried?


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