Lunker Leeches

EDITOR’S NOTE: After teaching him how to read and write, I’ve allowed Tommy to write his own blog. Here it is:

So you may be asking – ‘why the heck is there a blog post about leeches on this dang site?’. And to be honest, I don’t really have a great answer other than that Jonny allowed me to take the reigns on a blog. My name is Tom and I am the friend that showed Jonny everything he knows about fishing – the Mr. Miyagi to karate kid, Splinter to the TMNT, Doc Louis to Little Mac, Bud heavy to Bud light, etc etc. So any successes Jonny has in the world of fishing can and should be attributed to me. It is widely misunderstood that as you get better at fishing you catch bigger and bigger fish, but as any seasoned fisherman will tell you, the real skill is catching little tiny fish that girls think are cute on dating apps. Seriously, would you want to date this guy?

Or this loser?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The answer is obviously neither.

But back to the leeches. It all goes back to the dog days of summer when Jonny and I were being perpetually punished by mother Gaia for trying to catch trout in 85 degree weather at 2pm in the afternoon. Everyone knows these are optimal trout catching conditions. As you’ve seen from the other blogs, we basically went to every honey hole in central Mass in search of these prizes without success. One day, after fishing a beautiful reservoir without luck we decided to search for an elusive brook that Jonny claimed to be a trout stocking point during the Springtime (he gets on these googling kicks and sees that someone caught a trout in like 1939 therefore making the stream an untapped goldmine of bows, brownies, and brookies). Long story short, we get to this ‘brook’ and it’s a literal hell-hole (opposite of a honey hole). The stream is basically in someone’s backyard and there is a road dividing it with a big concrete drain pipe connecting the sides. On one side is a stagnant swamp and on the other a tepid, barely moving trickle of a stream. Even to us two noobs, these waters looked like a waste of time (pickerel-ish at best). Nonetheless I waded in and Jonny trekked downstream with the eager optimism that only comes with virgin waters. 

EDITORS NOTE: It was such an unremarkable and disappointing stream that I didn’t even take a picture. Hand up I fudged up.

By the end of an hour or so, Jonny had made his usual offering of a few lures to the depths and I was getting ready to call it quits when I noticed movement in the water. There were these weird, undulating flashes that kind of slinked their way through the water. They looked like this:

I was oblivious. The next thing I realize is that there is this black, rubber worm looking thing by my foot. I went down to grab it, and saw it was stuck headlong to my ankle. A LEECH. The only time in my life I remembered seeing these things was when I was like 8 years old hiking with my mom near a forest pond. I hadn’t seen them since. What a bizarre but absolutely awesome little creature. Not gonna lie and say I wasn’t freaked out and made sure we got the picture ASAP before ripping it off but it was definitely a memorable experience and actually didn’t hurt at all. As bad of a fishing spot as this was, it was well worth being reunited with these little suckers (I know this sounds effing weird, but these things really are cool to see in the water, nothing like gross ass ticks).  Yes, Jonny took a picture of it. TRIGGER WARNING:

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And here’s a picture of all of your reactions, courtesy of my family’s dog Nacho:

As some of you may have seen in the other blogs Jonny and I have decided to put our lives (especially our highly active dating lives – soo many dates all the time) on hold to go to more school. Jonny is doing his phd (being paid to be there) and I’m currently in med school (very much paying to be there). I bring it up because my first rotation I went on this year was plastic surgery which is actually one of the last areas in medicine to still use FDA approved leeches!

Leeches have one of the most potent blood-thinners known (called hirudin) and so you can basically use them for localized blood-clot destruction rather than having to give someone blood thinners in the whole body. They are most often used when skin and other tissue is moved from other parts of the body to cover a wound (called a ‘flap’). These flaps can get congested with blood and end up forming blood clots, so by throwing a few leeches on there you stop this. Freaking awesome.

Anyway, that is all I have to say about leeches and I realize there is has been very little fishing talked about in this blog but thanks for reading and I hope I get to write again soon! (ideally about catching a massive lake trout – would be so sweet).

Pray and Cast,

Tommy P