I grew up fishing in a family that loves fishing, boating, and being near the water in general. I fished prolifically every day after school in a small stream a

I grew up fishing in a family that loves fishing, boating, and being near the water in general. I fished prolifically every day after school in a small stream a few kilometers from my house until I was 13 years old. I quit when one day I went out by myself (like I usually did) and within a few minutes I caught a pike. My first. I landed it to remove the hook from its mouth and that's when it wriggled violently in my hands, piercing my right hand thumb in the fleshy bit with the hook that was still attached to its mouth. At first, the hook wasn't too deep into my flesh, but the pike kept wriggling, and within seconds it came out the other side of my thumb, right through the thumbnail. I don't think I've ever felt such pain at that age. I was bleeding all over the grass, crying and panicking with this slowly dying fish attached to my hand. Reluctantly, but knowing I had to do so, I found a dagger in my tackle box and cut off the fish's head. It didn't go well and the creature died a horrible death as I cut its head off with my weak left hand, trying to ignore the pain in my right. But it was finally dead. My hand started hurting a lot. So much, in fact, that I couldn't pack up my things and ride my bike back home, so I sat down hoping that someone would come by to help me out. The pike's head still dangled from my thumb. Eventually a kid about my own age saw me (crying my eyes out) and his mother drove me home. A few hours later, I was in the doctor's office and with some local anesthetic, he cut the barbed part of the hook off and slid the rest of it out the way it entered. He thought the whole situation was kind of funny. The kid's mom who had driven me back home had wrapped up the pike in a newspaper and given it to my parents who promptly threw it in the garbage since it was covered in my blood and badly mangled from my botched up knife work. I didn't fish again until two years ago (I was 32) when I thought I'd try it again for old times' sake. I caught a fish pretty early on. It was a tiny little bass with this enormous hook of my lure poking through its upper lip. I felt like crap. If this creature felt the way that I must have felt, I couldn't continue fishing. I sold my gear on Craigslist for cheap just to get it out the house and said goodbye to it forever.