HOOKED! A fishing story.

I used to live on a lake up in New Hampshire. One day in late May, my good friend, The Emperor Bolo came up from Mass for a visit. We got a cooler full of beer and set out in the rowboat for some fishing on the northern end of the lake.

Now The Emperor Bolo was no fisherman, so I was trying to teach him how to cast. We were using floating Rapala lures, basically wooden minnows with three sets of treble hooks on them.
We were fishing between lily pads, getting snagged, getting unsnagged, drinking a lot of beer in the hot sun. We took our shirts off because we were roasting.

He cast, there was a snapping noise, and suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my back, right between the shoulder blades. Seeing no lure at the end of his line he said, Where the hell did my lure go?"

"You assh*le!" I yelled, "IT'S IN MY BACK!" I then launched into a string of obscenities that could be heard echoing through the hills, and I told him to pull it out of my back.
"I don't know if I can," he said, examining it more closely, "It's really in there! Man, I got ya with all three hooks."

I said, "Well, get it really OUT of there!"

So he yanked and twisted the hooks around until I couldn't hack the pain any more, and I told him to stop.
I called him every conceivable name I ever heard and we both started laughing like hell.

"I don't know," he said between laughs, "Maybe you should go to a doctor."
I said, "You can't take a hook out of a damned fish, let alone me. Let's find some real fishermen who can help us. If I had a mirror, maybe I could take it out myself."

We were laughing again when I noticed he had some of those mirrored sunglasses on!
I made him position his face close to my back and angle his head so I could see the lure in my back. I tried to contort myself and pull the hooks out and I must have looked stupider than hell because he was crackin' up all over the place.
"Really man, I'm sorry, " he said, "I don't mean to laugh, but I can't help it!" I tried to row back to my cottage, but the pain was too much. The hooks were right in the muscles needed to row.
Numb-nuts tried rowing but kept popping the oars out of the oar-locks and laughing. Meanwhile I was bleeding like a stuck pig, and attracting flies.
We spotted some grubby looking dudes in a bass boat, and they must have heard me swearing, because they came over and offered to help. The guy reached into his fishing box and pulled out a pair of pliers that were orange from rust. "Boy, he really gotcha good. Maybe I can snip off the ends!"

His partner just stared at me like a moron at a magic show. I didn't like the idea of some gooney hick ripping up my back with a pair of rusty pliers, so I asked them to tow us back to shore.
When we finally got there, we took pictures of Bolo's big catch. (shown above)
Bolo drove me to the Lakes Region Hospital, warning me all the way not to sit back and get blood on his seats.
The nurses at the emergency room cracked up when they saw this green minnow hanging off of my back.

The doctor walks in, looks at it and asks, "Catch anything?"
He gave me a tetanus shot and pushed all three hooks through and cut off the ends.
Then he gave me my lure back. I held it up to Bolo and said, "Do you know where I should stuff this?"

So that's the fishing story for today. I have a lot more.