Performing a Hookectomy

  Removing a Hook from a Fish’s Mouth

I in these flowery meads would be:

These crystal streams should solace me;

To whose harmonious bubbling noise

I with my Angle would rejoice:…….The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton

 

The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton (1593 – 1683), published in London in 1653 is a practical guide to the art of angling, aka fishing. Encyclopedia Brittanica describes the book as “a pastoral discourse on the joys and stratagems of fishing that has been one of the most frequently reprinted books in English literature”. The nominal plot involves Piscator (a fisherman), Venator (a hunter), and Auceps (a falconer) discussing the merits of their pastimes.  Thank goodness there was no Pickle Ball player present. Auceps, a defender of hawking, drops out of the story early and leaves his companions at Theobald’s (located about twelve miles from London).  A conversation between the fisherman, Piscator and Venator, a lover of hounds and hunting, commences as Piscator (Pisces…the fish) convinces Venator to accompany him for several days of fishing. The bulk of the work then proceeds to practical advice to fishermen, as told by Piscator - about such topics as bait and fishing equipment; the habits of different kinds of fish; and methods of catching and cooking various fish. Piscator, clearly Walton himself, aims to teach the Venator the noble art of fishing and how to catch the various species of fish in the local rivers. Like Chapter 32, Cetology, in Moby Dick a section that goes into excruciatingly minute details about whales, the Compleat Angler can also be occasionally long winded, notably a prolonged section which describes various artificial flies used for catching trout and how these should be made - with which feathers, threads and other materials. Alas, Piscator does not discuss how to remove a hook from a fish’s mouth. 

 

I have never taken a hook out of a fish’s mouth. Yes, I’ve never performed what I now refer to as a “hookectomy.”   Never.  I tried fishing when I was around 11 years old with my Uncle Danny. Uncle Danny was an avid angler and took me only that once. Why?  I, city boy, could not bring myself to put a worm on a hook.  I wouldn’t even touch the worm.  Never progressed to hook removal. God knows what he told my parents.  I was not asked me to go fishing again. I don’t even eat fish for that matter.  All of my friends here in Lake in the Clouds love fish and fishing. Good for them. Most of the contractors who come to our home to do work ask about the fishing in the lake. I tell them it is great. They ask if I fish.  I tell them no.  I get strange looks. 

 

“Carpe Diem does not mean fish of the day”……Unknown………

This brings me to our six-year-old grandson, Gavin.  Last year at age five, Gavin indicated an interest in fishing while visiting Margaret and I here in the Poconos. I agreed to take him down to our dock and do some fishing with some ancient fishing poles that had been in our shed for 20 years. Since I had never put a worm on a hook, (see reference to “Uncle Danny), I had no intention of doing so now. I convinced Gavin that fish liked bread, so we put small pieces of bread on the hook.  I had no problem doing so and we “fished”.  Surprisingly, the fish were not attracted to the bread. The bread would deteriorate to mush, fall off the hook and we would put another piece on. Being five, his attention span was about 15 minutes before getting bored and deciding he would rather fish with the scrub brush which we usually used to clean our pedal boat. It has a 2-foot handle.  He caught nothing.  He asked if we could fish from the pedal boat.  So, off we went with me pedaling and steering and Gavin trailing the scrub brush in the water.  He caught two water lilies but no fish.  We returned to shore.  “The fishing was good; it was the catching that was bad”……….A.K Best.  

 

Shockingly, despite the lack of action, he was still interested in fishing.  I was still not interested in extracting a hook from a fish’s mouth.  He’s smart. He asked if we could use a bait other than wheat bread.  Being a good grandfather, I agreed to find some.  I did not mention worms, live or otherwise. Nope, no worms. I checked Amazon (where else) and found fake maggots.  They are tiny little white things about ¼ inch long.  You can buy hundreds for a few dollars.  See the picture of “Maggot Man” I constructed above.  Did I mention that our fishing poles were broken. They would neither cast a line nor reel it in.  Gavin didn’t care.  I didn’t care either but I mentioned this to our neighbor, Bill, an avid and expert angler. Bill offered to not only repair the poles but to take Gavin and the gang out on his fishing boat for some real (reel?) fishing. I had no issue with this as I would be absolved from the task of taking a hook out of a fish’s mouth should we actually catch a fish.  Unfortunately, the fish were not hungry that day, so we completed our cruise empty handed and hook free.   The following day it was time for Gavin and his parents (our son, Brian, and our daughter-in-law, Lisa,) to return home to Ohio. I promised Gavin I would bring a fishing pole and the maggots to Kettering on our next visit.  “Fishing is boring unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting.” —Dave Barry

 

A few weeks later, we arrived in Ohio and by the end of the first day, Gavin had asked several times about fishing.  I had brought the ersatz maggots and agreed that we would go fishing the next day. There is a town lake about 10 minutes from their home and so off we went.  We had called Roger, his other grandfather who lives 10 minutes away, to meet us there.  Roger had experience fishing so I was confident that he could take any captured fish off the hook.  In the event, the phony maggots did their job and we caught nothing.  I tried to act disappointed.  I didn’t know that you have to push this little white button on the fishing rod to release the line and cast out a few feet. We had told Gavin that the “bait” should be moving in order to attract fish and he soon decided that running back and forth on the pier with the fishing line trailing in the water would do the job.  Still no fish but although his attention waned, his enthusiasm for fishing did not.  Luckily, it rained the next day and I convinced him that fish stay at the bottom of the lake when it rains so that they don’t get wetter. Hey, he’s five. it sounded correct but I was completely wrong.  Fish may come to the surface more when it is raining, and fish are typically more active when the conditions are cloudy than very sunny.

 

Now six, Gavin and family arrived last week.  “The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.”

John Buchan……………My hope was that Gavin would not catch a fish.

The first thing he asked was……guess.  Fortunately, bogus maggots have no shelf life, and I still had a few hundred or so. The next day we went down to our dock and commenced to fishing.  It was just Gavin and I as everyone else was in the house.  Our friend, Bill, had shown me the proper method for casting the fishing line by now and I was able to show Gavin how to cast. He learned quickly and became quite competent.  I was supremely confident that we would catch nothing with our counterfeit maggots as experience indicated that they wouldn’t work.  I was wrong. Within five minutes, Gavin shouted “I’ve caught a fish!”. So he had. The round floaty (bobber) thing had disappeared under the water and was swimming back and forth. My worst fishing nightmare had come true. There was no one there to help me.  Of course, I had to pretend I knew how to get the hook out of the thing’s mouth.  I was the adult in the room, or dock as it were.  Gavin reeled it in and there at the end of the line was a sunfish.  I looked around for something to hold the fish while I attempted to remove the hook.  Gavin kept exclaiming “I caught a fish!  “Look! A fish!”  After a few attempts at putting the fish back in the water….perhaps it would spit the hook out on its own……the fish was still at the end of the line. It was now very still.  Was it still alive? Gavin suggested we fill a small bucket with water and put the fish in it.  We lowered the still very still fish into the bucket.  Suddenly it started thrashing and splashing around.  Gavin yelled and ran to the back of the dock. To my shame, I was right behind him.  

Fortunately, looking in our storage box at that end of the dock (the fish had quieted down by now), I found a butterfly net that Gavin had also used in futile attempts to catch fish.  Note, he had also used it for chasing chipmunks.  The butterfly net would reasonably keep material between my hand and the fish, so I wrapped my hand in it and returned to our captive. By now our shouts had alerted the folks in the house. Margaret and Lisa came down to see and photograph this Hemingwayesque (see The Old Man and the Sea), great accomplishment. Using the net, I grasped the fish, still quiet, held it with my left hand and somehow, I really don’t know how, the hook came out of the fish’s mouth as I tried to maneuver the hook.  It was my first hookectomy! We lowered the stunned and no doubt traumatized, but still alive creature, into the water and released it.  It swam, hurriedly, away.  I was mentally exhausted.  Post angling, I wondered if the fish could hear all the yelling and commotion.  I was to discover that unlike us humans, fish hear using an inner ear located inside the brain cavity, just behind the eyes. There's no need for an outer ear, as the fish's body is about the same density as the water, and so sounds travel through the water, the fish, to its ear. Nothing about when dangling at the end of a fishing line though.  Beyond that, fish ears are, in many ways, similar to the ears in mammals; in fact, the ear first appeared in fish hundreds of millions of years ago, and later ears evolved to work on mammals. To put fish earing abilities in perspective, a teenage human can ideally hear sounds from about 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. Most fish, both in freshwater and salt, detect sound from 40 Hz up to 500 or 1,000 Hz. So not only was the fish dazed, it was probably deafened by all the yelling.  Flushed with success, Gavin, now wanted to “go out in the boat and fish”.   Can a grandfather say no?  Into the pedal boat we went and out on the lake we went.  Sure enough, minutes later, and way, way too soon if you ask me, the imitation maggot struck again.  We caught another fish.  By now I considered myself proficient at hook mining so after we admired our catch as I’ve seen fishermen do as I have observed from our dock:

1. Hold it up and look at it 

2. If it is large, measure it. 

3. If it is really large, take a picture. 

4. Perform hookectomy and 

5.Release the fish back into the water.  

I placed my hand in the butterfly net for the hookectomy.  It was then that I discovered that sunfish have very sharp dorsal fins.  It felt like several sharp needles sticking me in the palm of my hand.  I dropped the fish…..in the water. Evidently one should grasp the fish by the underside.  Being a fast learner, I put my hand back in the butterfly net but now grabbed the fish by the other side and extracted the hook. Jiggling seems to be a good methodology.  The fish swam away.  Gavin still wanted to fish but mercifully, for me and the fish, we caught no more. We pedaled back to the dock and Bill, the fisherman, was there.  He had seen us in action out on the lake and brought more “bait”.  Bill, a good friend, presented us with “Berkley PowerBait” and “Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits”, all of which were quite large, several inches large.  I immediately thought of the monsters we would catch with these giant things and the accordingly giant mouths that I would have to stick my hand in to remove hooks from.  We thanked him for his thoughtfulness. Secretly I was determined to keep using the faux maggots.  Gavin, Brian, and Lisa spent most of the next two days at Lego Land and upon their return he wanted to _________fill in the blank. Fortuitously, there were several six-year-old activities to engage in, playgrounds, a visit to Callie’s Candy Kitchen (I had him practicing saying Callie’s Candy Kitchen fast three times), indoor arcades and outdoor rides to distract him.  In between, the maggots did their job and we failed to catch anything although Gavin was persistent, as only a 6-year-old can be, in his efforts to convince me to use Bill’s gargantuan bait.  

Sadly, the visit came to an end and Gavin, Brian and Lisa returned to Ohio along with a lifetime supply of imitation maggots, several large ersatz “worms”, courtesy of Bill and a ventilated “bug box” containing a caterpillar Gavin named “Crawly”, leaving Margaret and I thoroughly exhausted.  It serves us right as Gavin thinks that we are also six years old and we behave accordingly.  This includes much rough housing and chasing around the house. With them gone, I will hope that Gavin forgets about Bill’s ginormous bait and I will return Bill’s mutant monsters to him.  Taking his advice, I will now keep an old dish towel in the dock storage box to assist with future hookectomies. I also looked up “how to remove a hook from a fish’s mouth” technique on the Internet.   Yes, I know I should have done that prior to our fishing expeditions but I was convinced that the fake maggots would do their job. 

Wiki How has a multi-step guide o removing a hook from a fish’s mouth

·      “Reel the fish in until you can grab it with your hand.” No, I am not going to grab that slimy thing with my hand. 

·      “Hold the fish firmly so that it cannot wriggle free.” No, see reaction above.

·      “Use a barbless circle hook, not a "J" hook” Well, we had a barbed hook that had probably been on that line for 20 years and I didn’t have anything else so forget that advice. 

·      “Pull a hook straight out of a fish's lip”.  See barbed hook above

·      They then go on to what to do if the fish swallows the hook. Once I saw “pincers” and then, “disgorger”, I stopped reading. 

 

The gang left early on a Friday morning.  The house felt empty.  We missed them. Having fished more than I ever fished in my life, I now had a break from fishing at least for a few weeks. No more pseudo maggots for a while. No more fish catching angst. No more hook removal angst. So that should be it. 

But it wasn’t. Later that evening around 7ish, after we had a well-deserved (large) glass of wine, there was a knock at our door. It was a man, woman, and boy of around ten. They live just down the road and across the street from us.  Although other than saying passing “hellos”, we had never spoken to them.  They said “hello”.  We said “hello”. The man pointed to his head and asked me if I could get a fish hook out of his head.....Really.........Of all the people in the world to turn to. Of all the people who had been traumatized by performing a hookectomy..........Evidently, they had been fishing. The boy had been casting for fish, he missed the water and now the hook was now embedded in his father’s scalp. They didn't know what to do.  We had no idea what to do either but we invited them in, and Margaret and I examined the hook buried in the back of his head.  Clearly, I could not use the old dish towel to hold his head and remove the hook. Fortunately, the man had a crew cut so the hook was easily located.   That sucker was stuck in there. In one place and out another place.  We asked if it hurt.  He said, “a little”. They did not know about Urgent Care near us.  While Margaret tried calling our other fishermen neighbors (Bill was on an Alaska cruise), to no avail, I donned surgical gloves, and armed with a hand lens and hydrogen peroxide, went in for a closer examination.  Then, we switched, Margaret did the examination and I tried to ascertain if Urgent Care was still open. Our fishing expert friends/neighbors were, alas, still unavailable.  We left messages. While we were running back and forth figuring out how to perform a scalpal hookectomy, Margaret was back making phone calls. I didn't think he would appreciate my successful jiggling method of fish hook removal.  I was in the surgical gloves and the gentleman had his finger next to the hook.  Somehow between his finger moving and my surgical gloves gently pushing, the hook came out!  I’m not sure who was the most relieved, him, his wife, his son, Margaret or me.  We didn’t know how we did it.  But it was out. We bathed the wound with more hydrogen peroxide and give them the bottle of the stuff advising them to keep watching the very small cut. We gave them some drinking water, hookectomies can be thirsty work, and I gave the boy a giant pretzel.  Very grateful, they left. We had another glass of wine. Then our friends returned our phone calls. As expected, they all had experience in human hookecectomies.  Evidently fishermen sink their hooks into other fishermen more than one would think. Each explained how to remove a hook from a human.  All described it as a simple process. I think I’ll remember it the next time someone comes to our door with a fishhook stuck in his head. The next morning, as I was watering the flowers in our garden, his wife came by while walking their dog to say thank you.  She had found the Urgent Care we described but he was healing nicely and there were no after affects.

Two days later, I was speaking with my sister, Mary, who lives in California.  I described the hook adventures and accompanying angst.  She, like everyone else, couldn’t believe I had never removed a hook from a fish’s mouth.  Evidently, she had fished with “Uncle Danny” and was an experienced hookectomyist. She had performed several hook removals in her life.  In fact, everyone to whom I related this story, and possibly most of the people on the planet Earth had at some time performed a hookectomy on a fish. As noted some had even extracted hooks from human fingers, hands, arms, feet, legs……….. but I, heretofore totally inexperienced in performing a hookectomy had successfully removed a fish hook from someone’s head. Yet, I remain humble.