- Every year, thousands of people head to the Hayward area
for a vacation.
And most take the time to do a little fishing.
While it's unlikely they'll catch a fish big enough
to land them in Hayward's Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame.
Every year more than a hundred people who are hooked on fishing
will get hooked while fishing.
They'll end up meeting Dr. Dayle Quigley.
Not at the boat landing, but in a Fishing Hall of Shame,
located just across town in the Hayward Hospital Emergency Room.
- We saw five in one day about a week ago.
- Dr. Dayle is the Medical Director at the ER.
- We do have some locals who come in,
but for the most part, they're tourists.
- They have boxes of old hooks
removed from thumbs, necks, arms and more sensitive spots.
But some of the best lures end up
in the Emergency Department Tackle Box.
- This is two or three years of just the pretty lures.
- This display case was built by Dr. Bob Swenson.
He's retired now but in the 1990s
he removed a lot of hooks from a lot of fishermen.
- In the '90s is when
the lures started getting more colorful and pricey for Muskies
and that's why I said, "Let's save, basically, as many lures,
"but give patients credit for it
by having their body part and date."
- The stories have similar beginnings:
an errant cast or someone fell down on their lure.
- I would say the majority just maybe touch it,
and then they start hurting so much that they scream or grunt,
and they say, "No, I'm going to the ER."
- Most of them are embarrassed more than anything else
that there actually in the ER for this.
- Removing a treble hook does not require much
in the way of modern medicine.
- It's not a delicate operation.
- That barb holds tissue,
and the connective tissue under the dermis is really tight.
- Walk in, numb it up, get it out, done.
So we have your typical wire cutters.
We have some heavier duty gauge ones.
This is my favorite actually.
I call this the "Jaws of Life."
Not as big as what they have with the fire department,
but it does what we need for the big Muskie lures.
- Most fishermen come directly from the lake.
Dr. Bob remembers a boy
who hooked a fish who hooked the boy.
- A largemouth bass and patient came into the ER
with the hook on his right arm,
with the bass he was holding with his left hand.
- They even weighed the bass
after the hook was out of the angler and the angled.
- Two and a half pounds.
- Not bad?
- Yeah, 16 incher. Yeah, it's a keeper.
Isn't it pretty here though?
This is a nice place to fish.
- Dr. Bob knows getting hooked can happen to anyone.
- I can't feel a damn thing.
- It happened to him
just a few days after talking about his "Wisconsin Life."
But he decided to take care of it himself.
- Oh! [labored breathing]
[laughing]
First, first.
It's a first.
- I actually know somebody who,
when their grandchildren come to fish,
cuts the barb off the hook so that nobody gets hooked.
- Since the hooks keep coming, Dr. Bob says
it's probably time to put some more trophies on the wall.
- This display case is only for a couple years,
and it filled up, and I guess
I'm going to build another one for them.
- Ten to two and it's wrist. It's not arm.
- I'm not supposed to look like I'm shot putting.
- Right. - Yeah.