The Good Hands People

It finally happened. After fishing for more than 40 years, nearly 30 of them semi-seriously, I pulled the ultimate goober move last week at El Salto. Luckily I was in the right place for it. 

Backing up, the first time I saw the “line trick” in person was when I was performing it on my wife Hanna, way back on our first trip to El Salto in December of 2009. We were in the far back of a pocket and saw a fish bust behind some trees. She was still in the infancy of her fishing career and didn’t think she could make the cast, so she asked our guide to try. He reared back and…sunk the trebles from a Pop-R into the meaty part of her forearm. 

She looked shell-shocked, he looked flummoxed, and I needed to come up with something. I had no idea where the closest hospital was, but I’d seen a diagram or video of the line trick for removing a hook sunk past the barb. I removed the treble, got a length and braid, looped it around, pulled, and prepared for a blood-curdling scream.

Instead, the hook popped right out. I was now an expert.

A couple of years later, in the same place, a fish that had grabbed her Rat-L-Trap flung it back at her at close range. It nailed her in the shin, went through the pants, and sunk into her flesh again. This time lodge employee Tony Encinas took care of it.

Meanwhile, I’d had a pretty good streak going, nothing that a pair of pliers and a little elbow grease couldn’t fix.

Then we got to our last afternoon in Mexico. The fishing had been quite good, including a deep cranking bite. I’d replaced some worn-out trebles during our lunchtime siesta break and brought the lures back to the boat. As I went to tie on a deep diver, I must’ve slipped, because one treble grabbed my right hand. In a reflexive move to pull away, the other one grabbed my left hand. At the risk of being too goofy, it’s apt to say that my hands were tied.

I was mad. Not only was it one of the top ten dumbest things ever done by a person who’s done a lot of dumb things, but I was going to miss out on the last great bite. Fortunately, our guide had a calm attitude, some bolt cutters, and some braid. He cut the lure off, separating my hands but leaving the two past-the-barb hooks in place. Then he got some line. I’m pretty tolerant of pain, but I was surprised at how much it hurt just sitting there. On his first attempt, he kind of missed. The line came off the bend of the hook. That didn’t hurt as much as I would have expected. His next two shots were perfect, though, and I was released to fight another day. 

We went out and crushed ‘em that afternoon, just not with the crankbait I’d originally planned to use.