It’s always best to get professional medical attention to handle situations like that. However, fishing often takes place in the middle of nowhere, or even in the open sea where you couldn’t find anyone for miles, to say nothing of medical facilities. If that is the case, you will have to do everything on your own.

Before proceeding to remove the hook, cut the fishing line. You won’t be needing that. 

The hook is much trickier. By design, it’s a barbed piece of wire made specifically to hold the bait and stop the fish from getting away. You can’t just pull and remove it in most cases, no better than a fish would, anyway. On the bright side, you have opposable thumbs, and you can use the power of your mind to free yourself.

Assess damage

There are several ways of extracting the hook. Picking either of them depends on how deep the hook went and how large the barb is. To choose the right method you need to know how bad it is. If it’s just the tip of the barb that’s bitten into your skin, you can safely remove it by just pulling on the shank, gently and without haste.

Anything else requires more careful assessment and preparation.

Disinfect at Every Step until Unhooked

The wound must be disinfected. It doesn’t matter how. Use undiluted alcohol if you must, but I advise against it, because, first, it hurts like nobody’s business, second, it can burn your flesh, worsening the damage, albeit disinfecting the area. Something like hydrogen peroxide does the job just as good and doesn’t hurt that much.

You also should disinfect the hook using the same means every time you do something.

• Method 1. Press and Yank

Tie your fishing line to the curved part of the shank. You should slightly loosen the hook in the wound to find out the position of the barb, and press on the eye so that you move the barb as far as possible away from the tissues of the finger. Then, keeping the line parallel to the straight part of the shank, yank the line while still pressing on the eye.

It’s going to hurt, a lot, but less than if you’d yanked on the shank without pressing. The barb will still do some damage if you pull it while pressing on the eye, but not as much as it would otherwise.

• Method 2. Advance and Cut

If the hook went too deep, you won’t be able to just yank it out. You have to advance the hook until it pierces your skin again, It’s going to hurt, and if you have painkillers on you, it may be the best time to use them. After the barb punctures the skin, use pliers or a similar tool to cut the barb off, then disinfect the tip and pull on the shank until the hook is removed.

• Method 3. Cut and Remove

I can’t recommend using this method, mostly because it’s only usable when the barb already sticks out of your skin. In that case, you just cut it and, generally, do everything as you would with the Advance and Cut method, but without advancing.

It’s the least painful method, but you have to be “lucky” to be able to use it.

• Method 4. Incise and Remove

Now, this is a mini-surgical operation. I cannot recommend it at all. Instead, seek medical attention urgently if you can find it within a reasonable timeframe. If not, here’s what you need to do.

Sterilize a knife or any other sharp tool and make an incision on the skin above the barb with it. Then pull the hook out.

It sounds simple, but it’s anything but. Don’t use this method if you have any other option. It has to be the last resort. If you can bear the pain, cut the eye of the hook instead to allow yourself the freedom of movement and try to get help. Remember, self-operations are generally bad. Operating on someone else without experience and knowledge can have disastrous consequences, even it something as small as this. Only use method 4 if you’re really desperate.