I watched from the shore as my dad made false casts with a fly rod.
He stood at the end of the dock, stripping line and whipping the dry fly through the air. He released the fly, which floated out onto the lake and settled on the surface of the water.
I took a few steps closer as he reeled the line back in.
I was but a child of seven or eight. It was the mid-nineties and America was booming. My family was at the Loon’s Roost, the “up north” family cabin that my grandparents on the Akin side bought as their future retirement home before I was born.
My dad was a longtime angler but relatively new to fly fishing. This session was more about practice than trying to catch anything. He reset the line and started the process again.
The fly hummed through the air.
“Dad,” I said.
He stripped more line off the reel and continued the ritual. I was standing directly behind him on the wooden steps that lead to the dock.
“Dad! You’re going to get me!”
Warm-up completed, he reared back for the actual cast. The fly stung me and buried itself deep in my upper arm.
Anyway, don’t blame the old man. The whole thing took less than 10 seconds. He felt horrible.
We spent the next couple hours in the emergency room of the hospital in Aitkin, Minnesota. It’s lake country, so the doctor was well-practiced in the art and science of hook removal.
Plus, I learned a valuable lesson: don’t stand in the path of an airborne fishing lure. And if you do, don’t be surprised when you get hooked.
If I suspected it was going to happen, why didn’t I move? Good question. Then again, there are plenty of situations like that in life. And not just when you’re a kid.
My first experience with a fishing-related puncture wound had occurred several years earlier. I snagged my Grandma Nancy through the meaty part of her hand where the index finger meets the thumb. I was using a short kid’s pole, but there’s no such thing as a training hook for fishing. She, too, visited the emergency room.
I’ve spent most of my career as a professional communicator. Like any other field, there are various ways to approach the work.
Maybe you’re an R-PIE person (Research, Plan, Implement, Evaluate). Perhaps you prefer the SMCR (Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver) framework to plan and segment your messages. Personally, I am a fan and practitioner of the Page Principles and Situational Crisis Communication Theory.1
It all matters, even if people don’t always notice.
What’s that? I need a hobby? No kidding.
Which brings me to another communication and storytelling tool: narrative hooks.
When you read a sentence (or a few) at the beginning of an article or story that immediately draws you in and makes you want to read more, that’s a narrative hook. There are lots of ways to do it—drop the reader right into the action, make a joke, start with a play on words, begin with dialogue, lead with a bold claim…
You will likely recognize the style. I’ve employed it quite a few times in the friendly pages of Bayview Wonder. And if you don’t recognize it from here, well… thanks for reading even though the first lines are boring.
Hooks are also a thing in songwriting. Slightly different approach but same general idea: get the listener’s attention. Blues Traveler even wrote a famous song about it.
Communications is a broad field. One of my longtime colleagues comes from a magazine background. Her high-gloss feature storytelling—drama! intrigue!—and my often straight-laced business communications style were sometimes at odds, but we became fast friends. Her debut novel was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. Other good projects are forthcoming just as soon as the audience is ready. Our offices used to be next to each other in the basement of a house-turned-office at the edge of campus.
“Who’s the audience?” we’d call through the wall while editing each other’s work. “What message are you trying to get across? Where’s your call to action?”
The graphic designers across the hall thought we were crazy. Oh well.
One time, I asked what her favorite part of the job was.
She didn’t hesitate.
"I like making cool stuff,” she said.
It could be anything—an article, a feature package for the magazine, a video, a social media post. It was the process of creation and the opportunity to share with an audience that did it for her.
My former boss referred to the time between announcing her retirement and her last day of work as the “long Minnesota goodbye.” It’s a feeling I can relate to as I prepare to head back to Nova Scotia next month. You get desensitized to it. How many times can you say goodbye? In how many ways? And when will it feel real?
Nearly a decade ago, my friend and colleague from the basement office gave me a plain white business card. Printed on its face in neat black type, it said:
“This is all preparation for your extraordinary destiny.”
Isn’t it nice to think so?
I’ve had that little card for years but of course I can’t find it now amidst the chaos of finishing things up and packing at home and at work.
That’s okay. The card is just a reminder.
I’ve learned a lot from my friend about writing, and work, and life.
Back in June, I signed up for an open mic slot at a literary festival on campus. I’d selected a couple poems as options along with a short reflection about working on a college campus these days. My friend and her son were there too. All three of us took a turn at the microphone.
Cool stuff.
I was fishing with Joel and Dahlke during a guys’ weekend trip to the Loon’s Roost.
We were flipping Rapalas for largemouth bass. Joel reeled one in.
He was working a treble hook out of the fish’s mouth when it gave a sudden shake.
Joel yelled something colorful, I don’t remember what.
The other hook had lodged between the first and second knuckles on his index finger. It was in solid, past the barb.
By then I was in my early 20s. I’d seen plenty more fish hook injuries since my childhood days at the cabin and worked several out myself.
After making sure he knew what I was doing, I used a small bolt cutter to free the fish from the hook in Joel’s hand. Dahlke tossed the bass over the side.
A meeting of the minds ensued. Dahlke was an Eagle Scout and an EMT. Joel was a fisherman and worked at a hardware store. I had the most hook-injury experience of the group and was the nerd who’d read and memorized how to deal with things like this.
We considered the options. There are three main ways to remove a fish hook.
In an easy case, you can give the hook a slight push down to clear the barb, then back it out. This works when the hook is straight and not very deep. It will still hurt. Depending on when you had your last booster and how much of your own research you’ve been doing lately, you may want to get a tetanus shot.
Another method is to carefully tie fishing line around the hook and use the line to apply backward pressure from the bottom of the hook. While you apply pressure, push down on the free end of the hook. This will pivot the hook, reversing the path it cut through your flesh. Once you’ve started to back out the hook and feel like it’s lined up for a successful exit, yank on the string. If you’re lucky, you’ll clear the barb. If you’re not, you’ll lose a little meat but at least it will be over fast.
Finally, and least pleasant, is the “push it through” method. It is what it sounds like. You grab the hook, hopefully with a pliers, and push it further into the skin, pushing through so the hook punctures the skin on the other side. From there, it’s easy—just use the bolt cutter to take off the tip and barb, then back the remaining wire out through the skin on the other side.
Because of the hook size, location, and depth on his finger, Joel opted for option number three.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “We can go to the emergency room.”
“Fuck that,” he said.
Dahlke and I caught eyes. He shrugged.
“Let’s do it,” Joel said.
We gave him a work glove to bite down on. Dahlke trapped Joel’s arm across the bench of the old aluminum boat and braced him from behind. I held Joel’s finger firmly in one hand and lined up the pliers with the other.
Later that night, Joel waved a bandaged finger at us from across the cabin living room.
“Popped it through and cut it off!” he said. “The paramedic guy just sat around while the English major did surgery right there in the boat.”
“Wasn’t worth my expertise,” Dahlke shot back.
“You were crying so much I needed him to hold you down,” I added.
I clanked my Captain Diet against Dahlke’s can of Hamm’s.
“Just another story now,” my dad said from his chair in the corner.
A hook’s nothing to be afraid of, really. Sure, sometimes it’s sharp, but it’s really just a tool that’s meant to bring something closer.
The barb is what you need to watch out for.
Coombs, W. Protecting Organization Reputations During a Crisis: The Development and Application of Situational Crisis Communication Theory. Corp Reputation Rev 10, 163–176 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.crr.1550049
Nice work, JJ, and informative. Hopefully, I will never have to use the information re. fly hooks. Also, the other side of the long “goodbye MN” is the long “hello NS”!