Some painful stories you guys have put up here! Here are a couple more to feed the pain monster….
It was December of 2003 and we where fishing of the coast of North Carolina. We had a giant blue fine tuna hooked up and nearly at leader. The mate, a good friend of mine grabbed the leader and took his wraps. Very soon he had leadered the large blue fin tight to the transom. Everybody took their pictures and looked at this fish. We estimated it at around 450 lbs. When everybody was finished, I bent over the transom with a pair of scissors in order to cut the 400lb test leader and release the fish. As I reached down with the scissors I saw the hook creating a triangle of flesh in the corner of the fishes mouth. The hook was tearing out. Just before I cut the leader the hook did indeed pull out of the fishes mouth. The mono was stretched so tight from the strain that it shot the hook back towards the mate’s hands. It hit his hand then bounced and hit mine. With the fish free we both stood up and proceeded to shake hands. As we did so, Marty, the mate winced and a terrible look of pain etched itself on his face. I asked him what was wrong. He pulled off the heavy welding glove that he had used while leadering the fish. His middle and pointer finger where massively swollen and purple. As we where inspecting his broken fingers he look at me and said “ Hey man are you all right?”… “Yea I’m fine, why?” He pointed down at the deck by my feet where a large puddle of blood was forming. Upon further inspection I found a large cut across the back of my hand where the hook had ricochet and hit me. Laid me open. I hadn’t even felt in happen. One large hook had enough power coming out of that fish’s mouth to break two of his fingers and cut my hand open… Go figure. We went on to catch several more tuna that day all of them over 400 lbs.
Fast forward to the summer of 2006 of the coast of Maryland. We where fishing the Poor Girls Open tournament. An all woman angler tourney held out of Ocean City, Maryland. We had a large tuna hooked up and an inexperienced female angler was on the rod. She fought the fish for 2 hours and then fell victim to the heat and exhaustion. She passed right out in the fighting chair. Since rod transfers are not allowed under tourney rules we had no choice but to try and revive her to continue the fight. After some ice, cold water and a mighty pep talk she recovered and resumed the fight. After a total of 5 hours the leader came up. I got wraps on the leader and got a gaff into the fish. We hit it with a second gaff and hauled it onto the boat. Turns out it was a 120lb blue fin tuna. As everybody was celebrating the catch, I started to position the fish to get it into the fish box so we could make the run to the weigh in. As I stepped over the fish it made one gigantic flop on the deck hitting me in the knees. I swiped my feet right out from under me and I fell to the deck. As I hit the deck, I felt a searing pain shoot up my leg. When I looked down my leg, I discovered that my foot had dragged over the gaff that was protruding from the fishes head and the point had entered my ankle just below the ball and just above my shoe. It then exited my ankle just above the ball. Nothing like having a ¼ “ diameter steel shaft looped through your leg. I had to pull a creative and very painful spin move to free my leg from the gaff and the fish… Made it back to the scales with the fish in time to take our prize and get our check… All I can say is ouch!
