Well, I took my eldest nephew trout fishing yesterday morning. This would be his first time trout fishing.
He arrived 15 minutes early, after I had explained in detail the “fishing buddy” #1 rule. A friend of mine and I have a
mutual understanding that unless you call or there was an emergency, “your 5 minutes late” you’ll have to find me on the water”!
After patiently assisting him retrieve his rap out of the trees a few times, we finally made it to a “sweet” section of water! A wonderful confluence of cold trout water into warmer bass water. On the way to this section of stream I had inundated my “poor” nephew with probably more storys in a half hour that he’ll ever hear. The one that “sticks” out in my mind, How I have had numerous hooks impale my body over the years. Most of them foolish mistakes on my part!
Well, it was not too long after that when my nephew nails a very decent brown trout! A very fat 16 incher! After a few helpful(at least I thought they were) pointers, he landed the fish. Now it was hook removal time. Being the “fisherman” of the family I decided to take this fishing education one-step-further! With out hemastats, I’ll show him how to remove the hooks from a very feisty browner! Before I knew it, OUCH!! After a second or two, I found myself staring at my thumb in amazement! Yes it went all of the way through!!
However, here is a strong case for barbless hooks! My nephew had recently lost a rap, so I gave him one I used during the catch and release/barbless only trout season. Let me tell you though it still hurt like SH**!!!, but I managed to pull the hook back through!! I then looked at my nephew and said, “This fish is going on the grill tonight”!!!
