Fishing Can Be Quite Hazardous To an Angler's Hands

Few anglers, at least those I know, would register any sort of complaint after a week of great walleye fishing. However, there I was, hands extended outward, complaining (to anyone who would listen) of sore paws.

 As is usually the case in fishing matters, sympathy was in short supply - even from my caring, if not patronizing wife. A teacher by profession, I have grown accustom to soft, clean hands and well groomed fingernails. Now my hands looked like something out of a B-grade horror flick.

Getting my hands in that kind of shape had taken an odd mix of great fishing, abuse, carelessness, and neglect - in this case, a mix of boating, fishing, landing, cleaning and cooking walleyes caught during a late-July fishing trip. My mitts were cut, punctured, cramped, burned, scratched, smelly, and reddened.

My fingernails were short, dirty, broken, split, and one was blackened (and sure to be lost soon). Who among you can identify with cuts from cleaning fish in poorly lit fish huts? What about sliced knuckles from carelessly sharpening cheap knives?

And what about gashes from razor-sharp, walleye gill covers, or worse, line cuts from tugging at your partner's snags or from demonstrating how easily you can break the 6-lb test mono you've been using?

Remember, if you will, the profuse bleeding from a nasty hooking that you inflicted upon yourself, or a carelessly placed finger when unhooking a pike.

Those cursed pan fish have a revenge all their own - the dorsal spines that render a neat row of punctures between the thumb and index finger, as you try ever so carefully to remove a hook so that the fish can be released unharmed. It is never a break-even proposition.

Fingernails? Fishermen should be born without them simply because they are impossible to protect.
Couldn't you do without scales driven under your nails, worm castings lodged in places impossible to clean, split nails from split rings and snap swivels, hangnails from poor hygiene on bugs 'n' guts trips, or soon-to-be-lost black & blue nails pinched between the boat and dock ?

In fishing, here's a rule of thumb - over the course of any decent fishing trip, the thumb(s) will be mangled and mutilated more than any other digit - a product of the constant doing and undoing of boat cover snaps, burns from thumbing the spool during those smoking runs that big fish are wont to make, and the abrasions that raspy-mouthed bass inflict after you've lipped a few good ones. The thumb is also the first finger hooked, pinched, or frozen on cold days.

Knuckles fare poorly, too. Just ask those fellas who use single-action reels for salmon. Burns ? Plenty of great opportunities here - especially rope burns from letting the anchor rope slip away, or cooking oil spatter burns while serving up shore lunch. Sunburn aggravates already-sore hands and can grievously damage the skin.

Equally punishing effects come from hands frozen and cramped around fishing rod grips early, and late in the season or sliced deli-like from shards of ice on a winter's day. Mix in a case of dishpan hands from the necessary cabin chores, slivers collected while splitting firewood, mosquito bites, the lingering smell of fish (pike in particular), and you have hands custom-made for the undead.

At this point, they may not even be suitable for picking your nose, let alone holding up a stringer of golden walleyes for a photo keepsake. All this fussin' over the condition of my hands ends with one final consideration. Imagine not having lipped any bass, grabbed any walleye, or thumbed a chinook's smoking run?

The only thing worse than cleaning fish is not having any fish to clean! Besides, time heals all wounds, and I have all winter - that is unless I do a little ice fishing. Let's see now - I'll cut the fingers off a pair of old gloves...