Spend enough time fishing, and chances are that you – or someone you know – will have an unpleasant encounter with a fishing lure at some point.

A fish hook in the hand, perhaps, or any number of other places on one’s body.

As the old saying goes, “You’re not a real fisherman until you’ve been caught yourself.”

Been there, done that.

I was reminded of the inevitability of fishing lure unpleasantness last weekend, when a friend and I spent a couple of days trolling crankbaits for pike and walleyes on a certain undisclosed body of water. I’d hoped to entice the fish by jigging, a more relaxing approach to time in a boat, but the fish weren’t having it. Only by covering water using shallow-running lures with multiple treble hooks could we entice the fish into striking.

You can probably g

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