What not to do when fishing

Some times salmon when striking a plug only get one set of hooks leaving the other set exposed The Person I was fishing with is one of my best friends and a very experienced salmon fisherman. The fish was a pretty big king ( photo below), she was hooked and on her side when the net entered the water she came back with a force and shot under the boat hooking the set of hooks not in the fish. The net we used was a very large, the hoop allowed us to stick the net further in the water and recover the king. At this point my buddy Ric Torres turned the electric motor on to get out of the fast water and into frog water to release her. While I had the nets basket in the water for her release, I reached down with both hands (Fish in the water ) and grabbed the net and the plug, one end still in the kings mouth. I was able to get the hooks out of the net as I was releasing her and

I have no clue how she did it but she some how flipped in the air twisting the free set of hooks spinning around so fast I didn't have tome to react, my mind processed the entire account in micro thoughts, slow motion. The hooks smacked my hand and buried , I reached down and grabbed the plug since all of the hooks were either in the fish or myself , I yelled for Ric to drop anchor . He looked down at my hand, the look on his face said everything I thought had happened. The big king continued to twist, I could see my skin and underlined muscle ready to tear out as it stretched, when Ric reached down and grabbed the net hoisting her in the boat. Thank Gawd he had a large pair of Cutters. I was more worried about stressing the big girl than I was my hand.

After we removed the hooks from her we placed her back in the net in the water, after we saw she was good to go I tried pulling the hook out from the direction it came but with every tug my thumb would move in a closing fashion . I knew it was maybe in a tendon and thought about the barb damaging something inside, I thought to myself it was time to man up and push it through. As I pushed I noticed it didn't really hurt as I thought it would until I began the upward push through the meat and then the skin. Wow skin is tough! It took allot to push that hook through but when I did seeing that barb exposed I was relived. Ric quickly cut the point off and I pull the hook back out the way it entered. Let me say even when a fish is not in close proxcimity of you with a hook in it BE CAREFUL ! Use some type of gripper to maneuver kings She was released and good to go.

Here she is , my hand throbbing to beat the devil but it made memories and a fish tail. Things happen way to fast more times than not it's the bad ones, just stay calm no matter how bad it hurts and think, this is a must, getting excited and thinking ill rational will get you hurt.