I got a hook in the hand story, except it wasn't my hand, it was my arm.

I was about 21 and went fishing with a couple of buddies to the Colorado
River. We had just arrived and I was rigging my bait. I didn't pull enough
line from the reel, so I grabbed what I had pulled out above my rod tip and
put some bend in the rod while I was tying the knots. Yep, that stored
energy will get you every time. The line slipped from my fingers and the
nice big treble hook that was supposed to go in the catfish's mouth embedded
itself on the inside of my upper left arm, the barb completely buried.

I told my buddies what I had just done and assumed that we would pack up and
they would take me directly to the emergency room to remove the hook. They
both gave me this very annoyed look and I surmised that their priorities
were to do some fishing first and get me to the ER second.

One of them had a pair of side cutters and he cut off the two other hooks on
the treble and then I guess they expected that I would just continue to fish
with them.

Not being one to spoil a good day of fishing, I didn't complain and just
decided to not say what I was thinking and let them fish. I didn't much
feel like doing any fishing with that big hook buried in my arm, so I just
sat on my fishin' bucket and took it easy for a few hours.

After a couple of hours they hadn't even gotten a nibble, so they decided at
that point that maybe we should go to the ER. The removal of the hook at
the ER was painless because they numbed me up with some lidocaine first and
then made a small incision so they could remove the barbed hook. I guess
they didn't want to push it all the way through and cut the barb off.

Anyway, that's the only time I've ever been hooked. Ever since then, I have
always been very careful with stored energy and fishing hooks. I saw a guy
once put his 16 oz sinker on the rail of a party boat and then bury a 6/0
hook in his hand when the boat pitched and the sinker fell from the rail.
Ruined his whole day.

After seeing that, I always rigged and baited up with my sinker laying on
the deck.

Watch out for that stored energy.

Ed Chait