One of the things I love to do is fly fish. The beauty....the majesty...the safety issues of not flyfishing.
I love the picture that comes with this article. One of the things that intrigued me about this was this line:
He is keeping the weight as a souvenir after doctors gave it back to him.
"It's my lucky weight now. I will carry it around with me," said Mr Williams, of Acrefair
When I was about 15 years old, I was running along the beach at dusk on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. My grandmother had a house down there, and I loved to run on the beach. So, I'm running, and I go under this fisherman's fishing pole and he's dragging his line in. As he does this, I feel a slight "bite" in my leg. Thinking it was a horsefly, I gave a quick half-step, to shake it off. It was not a horsefly.
Since it was dusk, the fisherman couldn't see his lure. He had pulled it up and it hit me in the leg. He thought it was still in the surf. When he felt the "tug" he thought it was a bite....so he set the hook. I went down in a hurry, the hook buried into my calf. I tried to back it out, but to no avail, as the barbs had bitten into my flesh....deep.
So I decided to go the rest of the way home. One mile. With the hook in my calf (mom always said, "Don't take rides with strangers!"). In what has to be my greatest John Wayne moment (when he was a tough guy, not when he wussed out and named names...) to date, I gritted my teeth and tried to push the barb out the other side so I could clip it. No dice. It was too dull and would not go through the muscle. So I ended up going to the hospital and getting it cut out.
I saved the lure, a Hopkins #4, and use, to this day, as my key chain. My good luck charm, if ever I had one...
1 comment:
Glad to see Arkansas' Buffalo River took top billing in your blog today. :-)
I am also glad to hear you still have the lure. I've told that story many times since 1983. I usually tell it when I am at the beach or fishing. I don't get to tell that story often enough.
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