Fished at Chickamauga Dam in Chattanooga, Tennessee from about 9:00 a.m. to noon. Didn’t catch a lot but I did catch one new species—a Green Sunfish—with a bobber and small red worm.

What a beautiful little fish. Particularly like the torquoise stripes on the face and orange-red tinged ventral and anal fins. It was probably no more than 6 inches long but I was excited to catch it since it was a new species for me. Other than that, I mostly caught Bluegill. I was hoping for Largemouth Bass but didn’t connect with any.

In the afternoon I moved to Booker T. Washington State Park, also in Chattanooga, hoping to add more sunfish species or maybe a bass. I caught several small Bluegill from a pier, but nothing new. I then moved closer to the open part of the lake and fished bobber-and-worm with no luck.

I switched to a Rapala rattling lure with treble hooks and started catching good-sized bluegill. Unfortunately, on the last fish, things went wrong. As I tried to unhook it, the fish thrashed and managed to drive the hook into my left pinky. I couldn’t get the hook out, and every movement was painful. I eventually freed and released the fish—probably the nicest thing I did all day for a creature that had just injured me. I imagine the fish might have thought, Now you know how it feels.

I was left with the lure stuck in my finger and wandered the parking lot asking people if they had wire cutters. The first person didn’t. Then I found a group—one man and two women—and asked again. The man had cutters but became squeamish when he saw the hook. One of the women, probably his wife, stepped up and cut the hook and lure away from my finger. Unfortunately, part of the hook remained embedded. She tried to remove the remainder with pliers, but it was too painful, and I asked her to stop. I thanked them all and decided it was time for the emergency room.

Google Maps directed me to Parkridge North ER, about 6.4 miles away. After a roughly 30-minute wait, they numbed my finger with lidocaine, rinsed with Hibiclens and removed the remaining hook without much trouble. They prescribed Augmentin as an antibiotic (which later gave me quite a bit of GI distress) and sent me on my way. I picked up the antibiotic at a Walgreens across from my hotel—the Drury Plaza—and called it a day.

The next two days would be fishing-free, but I hoped to resume on Monday, April 27, in and around the Atlanta area, where I’d be staying through Thursday morning before heading home to Rochester, Minnesota.