Bike and Beyond...: Pain in the Bass!

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Pain in the Bass!

My roommates and I recently started fishing. I'm talking all out, bought all the gear, and we paddle around and try to catch bass with fake bait. Here is a picture of our usual nerdy getup, it also happens to be the first Bass I caught.

It ends up that it IS pretty hard to catch fish. There is a massive amount of skill involved, despite what many think. Eventually, Eli, after massive amounts of online research and scanning Google Earth found a great lake up in the hills. He test fished it and caught tons of bass.

One weekend we packed up our stuff and off we went off to the lake. It was perfect fishing weather, cloudy. I actually really enjoyed it because it was a beautiful site seeing the clouds over the lake and hills.

That's how the day started, we all caught a fish pretty early on and were excited to work our way around the lake fishing the entire shore. About half way around the lake I cast off a large rock out into the deeper water. I'm reeling in my bait like a pro, then BAM something hits it hard. I wait a sliiiiggght second then... SET THE HOOK! I've got a fighter on the line. I reel it in, and as I'm about to grab it's lower lip to take the hook off, it struggles and falls to the ground. I'm mostly worried about getting it back into the water so I reach down to grab it, and it struggles again, stabbing my finger with it's spiny dorsal fin. Eventually, I get it back in and it swims off.

Derrick with the largest fish of the day, and a close up of the part of the fish that stabbed me.

Because I am always a jokester, I joke with Eli and Derrick about being stung by the Bass quill. And like clock work they start making fun of me for complaining about a little cut on my finger. We fish on though the day, catching lots of fish and having fun.

Here is what happened in the aftermath of that day, which by the way was April 29th.
My finger kinda slowly healed, but continued to bother me to some extent. It also was forming a sort of blister/bump.
So today I decided I better get to the bottom of this. I busted out my trusty pocket knife and started digging around in my finger. Guess what eventually shot right out? A bass "quill"!! And yes I took pictures, and I'm saving it to show my roommates after all the crap they gave me. Here is the pictures showing you the events: