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Posts: 699
Location: Hugo, MN | From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Tuskegee University student Ralph Squire had forked out five bucks for the fishing lure that very morning. When the crankbait became entangled in a bush while he fished later that day, he wanted it back.
That decision will haunt him forever.
"I had just bought the lure ... and right off the bat I threw it up in a bush," he remembers of the incident last May. "I kept pulling on it with the fishing line, trying to pull it loose from the bush."
The lure eventually came loose and struck Squire in the face. When several friends rushed to his side, they made a gruesome discovery: A treble hook from the lure was buried deep in Squire's right eyeball.
Squire became one of a growing number of anglers who have suffered catastrophic eye injuries from fishing lures, according to Drs. Robert Morris and Douglas Witherspoon of the Callahan Eye Foundation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The two surgeons can offer no reason for the increase in eye injuries from fishing, but they have the data to prove it.
Since 1982, emergency rooms and clinics across the nation have reported all eye injuries to a U.S. Eye Injury Registry at the Birmingham-based Helen Keller Foundation. Two years ago, eye injuries from fishing surpassed eye injuries from basketball as the No. 1 sports-related eye injury, the doctors say.
"Basketball has always produced the most eye injuries because of elbows and fingers," Morris said. "Racquet sports like racquetball and squash were next. Fishing injuries to the eye have now surpassed them all."
The two doctors are urging the fishing industry to get the word out about the dangers. The Helen Keller Foundation is working with Bass Pro Shops to create ads warning fishermen not to pull on lures that get hung up in debris.
For Squire, any such warning comes too late.
"The worst part was that I was wearing sunglasses and I tilted them up so I could see better," he said. "I gave the lure a big pull and it came loose and like a bullet it hit me in the face.
"It knocked me down, but I only felt the pain of the lure hitting me. When I stood up I could hear the lure rattling in front of my face and I knew it was bad. My friends came over and saw what I had done and they freaked out."
Squire's friends rushed him to a nearby hospital where he was sedated. He then was airlifted to Birmingham.
The injury was gruesome, but nothing the two surgeons at the UAB Callahan Eye Foundation hadn't seen before. The surgeons carefully cut off the barbs of the treble hook and removed it. Three surgeries later, Squire can see light, colors and movement through the eye.
"It's about like looking through an empty Gatorade bottle," Squire said almost a year after the injury. "I can see people's faces and hands when they are close, but everything far away is just a blur."
Squire eventually will have surgery to replace the lens in the eye. That should allow the eye to work well, Morris said.
Squire had the lure bronzed and it now sits on his dresser as a reminder of his mistake.
"My answer to anyone wanting to know how to get a lure loose is to just cut the line and leave it," he said. "There's no lure worth what I've gone through."
Data from the Helen Keller Foundation show that nationwide, fishing injuries now make up about 9 percent of all sports eye injuries, Witherspoon said. A hook to the eye makes up about 38 percent of those injuries, while 44 percent come from a sinker or the body of a lure striking an eye.
"People tend to think that a weight or sinker in the eye isn't as bad as a hook in the eye, but it can be just as bad," Morris said. "In a lot of cases the eyeball ruptures. In about half those cases the person is left permanently blind in that eye."
Morris said wearing fishing glasses and ball caps that can grab a lure before it reaches the face would substantially decrease such injuries. |
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Posts: 13688
Location: minocqua, wi. | hey .... as everyone starts throwing 8'6" and 9' sticks ... do the math on the boat and realize that you are more vulnerable now than you've ever been for a "partner hooking" incedent! ... i've been on the "hooked" side of this and trust me it's not fun and potentially dangerous and should be taken seriously. my glasses saved my eye ... hook bounced off of them and buried into my forehead.
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Posts: 2323
Location: Stevens Point, WI | That just made me get the goose bumps reading that. Another very good thing about sunglasses! |
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Posts: 199
Location: Anchorage | I can attest to the sinker danger.
A friend of mine was salmon fishing in MI with the brand new 10'6" drifter I had just built him. The first fish he hooked with it was roughly a 30lb King. While trying to keep the fish out of the current, he noticed it was hooked right in the tip of the upper jaw, the boniest part of the mouth. When the fish surfaced close to him as he was trying to beach it, the hook came unglued, and his 3/4oz bell sinker exploded his right eye. Completely gone.
After that I don't fish anything without glasses, walleyes, trout, crappies, and obviously muskies. For night fishing I even have a comfortable pair of safety glasses. |
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Posts: 468
Location: Not where I wanna be! | i actually think i have seen a pic of this accident......
or one very similar to the story i just read
nasty looking!!!!!!
and definately very painful!! |
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Posts: 199
Location: Anchorage | It was probably a similar incident. I don't think anyone took pictures of the accident right after it happened. Seeing him after words wasn't very pleasant either, though. |
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Posts: 39
| I always use Sunglasses with plastic lenses and not glass (for obvious reasons.) It makes me think that clear safety glasses for night fishing would be a good idea too. |
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Posts: 726
Location: Eau Claire, WI | I use clear glasses at night but usually when I'm running the boat. I've had some close calls at night with other's windups when casting. The closest to endangering my vision, I had a shad rap across the eye from a windup and lucky for me the back of the bait hit my eye and not the hooks. no blood but my reaction was foul. I felt bad afterward but hey the guy should have been paying attention. I was in the same place in the boat that I had been for a 1/2 hour then the guy changed up his casting path without bothering to look behind him. To me, it's comparable to controlling your gun. Be aware and control your weapon!
I think safety glasses at all times sounds like a great idea.
Sled is right about the rod length. I try to make a habit when I'm moving around in the boat to let my partner know that I am doing just that. I also watch where my partner's casting path is and make sure I stay away.
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Posts: 556
| i had 1 ounce jig smack me right in between the eyes two days ago hit the middle of my sunglasses but it was scary
Edited by guts 8/10/2007 12:34 PM
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| Jono made a good point. If you're going to move, and especially if you're getting off the deck into the well, let your partner know. Don't assume!! |
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Fishing surpasses basketball as No. 1 for eye injuries