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Saturday, July 20, 2019

Painfully hooked: Adirondack hospital fishing lure display is no joke


SARANAC LAKE, N.Y. – Sometimes fishermen get hooked in a painful way.

Gary Nye, a physician assistant in the emergency room at the Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake for more than 20 years, has treated numerous anglers who’ve come in with the treble hooks from fishing lures stuck on their thumbs, arms or legs, ears, noses, eyelids, lips, the side of their necks, the back of their heads – nearly every body part.

He said he’s taken lures off several patients’ penises and scrotums, adding those incidents occurred when the individuals were fishing with small bathing suits, or skimpy, loose-hanging shorts with nothing on underneath. “Usually alcohol has something to do with it,” he added.

As a testimony to Nye’s services and other hospital staff to Adirondack area anglers, the hospital in 1990 began asking individuals to contribute the lures staff removed for posting on a bulletin board where they could be displayed for all to see.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

No mention of boobs or the other female parts, as if women don't (drink and) fish or wear skimpy clothing while doing it.

Anonymous said...

Treble hooks are the worst.

Anonymous said...

I was on a charter boat where the host of the trip was hooked in the forearm with a 1 lb Bucktail. It was hard to look at. It was either the beer, or a macho attitude, that made the victim into a hero that wanted lots of pictures of his bloody arm with the hook in it, Not only did he have to suffer a 1 1/2 hour boat ride back to the dock, but he decided to drive himself back to Dover so he could be treated close to his home. I got the trophy rockfish that was caught on the other hook, and he got the Bucktail that was the second hook on my rig, before it became lodged in my host's arm while the fish was being netted. For several tense minutes on the boat, there was a huge rock fish and a human on my line. The host now has a picture of me, my rockfish, and him with the giant hook in his arm, in a shadowbox with the actual hook removed from his arm. What a fishing trip!

Anonymous said...

I was about 12 when I got a treble hook hooked into the end of my pointer finger. I remember being SO panicked where I couldn't pull it out. A trip to the local small town GP, and another needle stuck right into the tip of that finger, and he was able to remove it. Ended up with a small scar in the middle of my fingerprint that is still visible to this day, many, many years later. Alright, now that I've revisited that painful memory, I think I'll try to forget it again for the rest of my life. The pain of the hook isn't the painful memory, rather the memory of the panic I felt at not being able to unhook myself is what still scares me to this day. I can truly say I know what a fish feels like when they get caught. But I still love to fish! Go figure. Cognitive dissonance.