Hook pull.

River up, but steady and just the right amount of brown , that lovely bottle green is for later in the season. Thought I'd  search the bridge pool and the nice eddy where I had some bites last weekend. Fed  hemp and red maggot with back up caster and chop if the better fish moved in. They didn't as it happened. Plenty of dace, small roach and a few small perch  kept me quite busy. Had  a chat with a fellow  member passing by and as he busied himself with his lure rod  a couple of swims down an otter slipped past a tree and down a small mudslide into the pool. Most unusual in the middle of the day.

There'd been a couple of swirls  right by my feet when I'd returned fish and this time the dace shot off down the margins with something in pursuit. The next dace was soon lip hooked on a light float paternoster set up and in the slack just above my put back zone. It didn't stay there long, at first I thought  I'd hooked a decent perch but it was a small pike of about 3lb with another dace already down its throat.

Things quietened down fish wise then a small pike appeared right back in the put back zone, seeming to eye me up then head off into the flow once I'd fired the camera flash. I think it was the one from earlier  as it had a similar white marking on it's  right upper jaw. Very creepy.

I gave the glide below an hour as well, and was picking up some slightly better roach (no netters) when  the hook, a  #16 Guru spade end got buried  past the bend in my finger, right down the side of the nail. Barbed of course (micro barb), and though I could get some mini forceps to grip I couldn't twist it round enough to get the point back out. Began a painful pack down with a plan of getting home, washed and to our local  day cases A&E department. Bonus of living in a busy coastal area with a generous benefactor whose covenant excludes any closure. Made a deeper than comfortable rummage in my pocket to find the landing net handle cap and no stabbing of pain. The hook had either fallen out or more likely snapped after being weakened by the forceps, leaving the bend and point still in my finger  down the side of the nail. I guess if my finger starts to swell and feel hot to the touch it's the latter...it is sore now but given the poking and pulling I did that's no surprise. When was my last tetanus booster?