Growing up, living and working on a Minnesota resort, Northwind Lodge near Ely, MN presents challenges, wildlife, and some interesting stories next to the BWCA.
I guided people for over two decades and we handled fish and hooks - lots of them. In all those years, not a single one of my guests was ever hooked. We had a couple of "close ones" but luckily never had a barb go below the surface of the skin. That being said, I have now ripped the hooks our of quite a few people in recent years. One time, Pete Edwards came in with a hook buried in his thumb. Pete wanted it removed and wondered if I could help. I proceeded to snip the two points off of the treble hook which were not stuck in Pete using my bicycle spoke cutters. My cutters were back from my bike shop days and I kept all my bike tools - just in case I decide we need to go back into selling bikes. These spoke cutters would snip through 12 gauge, stainless steel spokes with ease and they work really well on hardened fish hooks.
So, the first step is to carefully snip any potentially threatening hooks along with the lure so we only have the remaining hook stuck in Pete's thumb. I know from experience, that a finger/thumb injury hurts all the way up to one's neck, so I carefully removed the points trying to not wiggle the main hook. Pete was understandably wincing. After I isolated the hook to just the part stuck in his finger, I found some 50 lb. test fishing line and a screwdriver. I put one loop around the base of the hook where it was sticking out of Pete and took the two ends and tied them around the screwdriver handle to fashion a MacGuyver-esque starter cord like you would find on a lawn mower. With the ripcord handle in my left hand and my right hand thumb in position, I told the "braced" Pete, that I would push down on the eye of the hook and rip at the same time to cause the hook to roll out in one swift motion. This maneuver allows the hook to open the skin and give a place for the barb to go that is not catching on skin. It rolls out in a quick flash of pain that ends usually pretty quickly with very minimal damage. It sounds terrible, but it does work.
Pete was going to be the first person I've ever done this to, ever....
I was ready, Pete closed his eyes and braced his aggravated thumb solidly on the counter right next to the cash register. I said, "On three. One, Two, RIP!"
The hook flew out of the thumb and pinged off the ceiling and walls at least three times. Pete roared in agony, "Jesus, Jumpin' Jehosphat! Oh MY GOD tell me it came out because that hurt like HELLL!" to which I quickly replied "Oh sorry, Pete - we're gonna have to try it again. It didn't work!"
Pete groaned like a dying lion at the thought of attempting it again and I quickly added that I was just kidding. It came out just fine. He opened his eyes, smiled and said "Whew!". We both had a laugh and Pete back out fishing.
I never have a boring day at Northwind Lodge. Sometimes, I wish I did.
Today, at 1 PM a sales rep came in to show us a line of hunting clothing for the store part of Northwind Lodge which is Red Rock. Red Rock Wilderness Store to be exact. He's an older gentleman whom I've known for quite a few years and he was outside for a bit getting a rolling clothing rack ready with the product line to display. I helped him wrestle it over the threshold of the store door and got behind the counter with Jackie as the show was set to go. This particular line is of clothing is cheap in price only. The actual clothing itself is some of the best we've ever seen in quality. It is simple, beautifully made, generously cut, very warm and just a great all around line that would easily go head to head with any line offered by any well-known big box retailer. So, we like it. One can actually own an affordable product that is made well. As a result, we always look forward to meeting this rep from Wildfowler. Earlier in the day, one of our cabin guests came into the store to buy some new Rapala X Raps. He'd been casting off of the dock at the beach on Jasper and brought in a nice large mouth bass. He also missed several other fish until he finally gave the lure up to the lake. Apparently it was tribute for the nice bass. He came to buy a few more and then disappeared back down to the beach to see if there were more nice bass waiting for a chance to attack an X Rap. About a third of the way in to the sales rep's presentation which was very casual as we like them that way ourselves, our guest and his friend came back in the store. I stopped looking at the rep and asked our guests if we could help them. The one guy said, "No, no. Looks like you are busy with this guy, we can come back later." I said, "No, we're fine. What can I get you?" "Well", he said. "Can you help me with this?" he queried as he held up his hand with the brand new Rapala X Rap in his palm. At first I was going to ask what is wrong with the lure, but then I saw the blood on his middle finger. He had one of those razor sharp, brand spanking new, treble hooks jammed in past the barb in his middle finger. The rep looked at it and said, "Whoa!" and the guy with the hook in his finger reiterated, "But, really....you folks ought to finish up here!" To the that rep said, "Don't worry about me. You gotta get that fixed!", and we concurred. I looked at it and said, "Yeah, I can get that out." We'll just pop it out with a string and a stick and the rep chimed in, "Yeah....you won't even feel it. I've had it done before." I asked to take a closer look and he presented his hand over to me. At that point, it passed right in front of Jackie who was standing next to me and she looked at the blood and rather urgently said, "Ooo, oooo... I, I gotta go to the back room." I thought she was going to knock me over as she made her distance and disdain be known. Jackie turns green at the first sign of blood, regardless of ownership. I laughed because I already knew that. I looked at the hook on that shiny, brand new X Rap and said that I'd go and get some snippers and we'll pull the points off the other two hooks of the treble and remove it from the lure body. It was then that I noticed that there was a pair of sucker lips stuck on the rear hook. He caught himself a bugle-mouth trout! The suckers are spawning in Jasper Creek and that is what hit the X Rap. He said it fought like crazy, pulling line out of his reel making the drag sing. But, then when he finally got the sucker up on the dock, he was trying to be nice to it by freeing it from the treble hook to let it go. Well, the sucker, being a rather obnoxious, rough breed of fish, decided that he wasn't going back into the lake without a fight. He flopped around magnificently, until he ultimately hooked this unsuspecting angler with the other end of a two-hook lure. At that point, being nice to the fish took far less priority as the shooting pains from his middle finger to his neck told him he should now "strangle the sucker". Anything to make that lousy fish stop jumping around on the dock.
I'm not entirely sure as to what transpired exactly, but there were sucker eggs smeared all over the front of the guy's shirt and a well-defined set of sucker lips still stuck to the back hook of the X Rap. That would indicate to me that the sucker didn't fair too well in the end. But, who knows? I ran up to my basement which after numerous years is looking more like a film clip from the show "Hoarders" and went directly to the spot where I had my bike spoke cutters from my past life as a bike mechanic. Like any organized mess, they were right there, proudly waiting for this moment. Then, I went back to the store, snipped about twenty inches of 60 pound test monofilament off a spool and grabbed a screwdriver. I had the guy go out on the deck and he was stammering, "Wait, now...wha...what are we doing?" While I was working on his hand as he laid it on the railing, I replied, "First, we're gonna snip that split ring and remove the lure so we don't get that other hook back in us by accident. Then, we snip all the points off the hook that aren't stuck in you." I moved carefully and tried to not jiggle the hook as I lopped off parts of the forge-hardened steel with my spoke cutters (spoke cutters really work great, incidentally) until I was down to the stem and buried point. "Then, we take this line and put it around the hook, right next to the skin. We wrap the two ends of the line around the screwdriver handle for a grip. I'm now going to tip the hook forward and yank on 'three' and it should pop right out. " His buddy said that he should have had a drink prior to this event to which he confirmed that he had just downed a beer. "That beer should kick in about half an hour after we're finished here. Lot good that's gonna do", I said. He shuts his eyes. I grip his finger and hold it down to the deck railing and carefully tip the hook forward with one of my free fingers. He closes his eyes. I think his buddy was giggling. "One, two, THREE!" and I give it a yank. It popped out as smooth as butter with barely the slightest hint of resistance. I go "All right!" as I see the hook is tangled in the line attached to my screwdriver. I look up and his eyes are still shut and I tell him we're done. He looked at his finger incredulously and said "That's IT?!" I don't believe he even felt it. Maybe that beer did kick in.
"Yup! I'll get some peroxide and a bandaid." I came back, patched him up and then put on a split ring and a new short-shank Gamakatsu treble hook on his X Rap. Oh, and I removed those sucker lips. He was good to go and quite relieved. Me, too - that's only the second time I've used that technique. The last time I did it to a guy's thumb he hollered "Holy Hannah! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! TELL ME that you GOT it, Joe! Don't say that we have to do that again!"
In that particular instance, the hook came sailing out and pinged around the room like a ricocheting bullet in an old cowboy western. I told the guy after his screaming that it "didn't work and it looks like I need to do it again". He groaned loudly and I then quickly followed up with, "Nah, we got it out! You're good to go!" He had to look at his thumb to verify. Whew! LOL! This year's hook removal was pretty painless. I went back inside to where Jackie had come out of hiding and was talking with the rep. We placed a Wildfowler order for some of our fall clothing lines and everybody was happy!
