For many anglers in the Gulf Coast area, it is a rather ordinary nuisance to hook a stingray. However, when you get on the wrong side of that barbed tail, it can really ruin your day…and your month. Two anglers tell of their painful run-ins with the rays, and one tells us how he hooked a giant southern stingray.
Hal Hargis of Houston, Texas launched out of Port O’Conner and went near Panther Port in San Antonio Bay to wade after red fish. He had not been wading long when he saw a flick in the water and went towards it. Suddenly he felt a little prick on the side of his foot. It didn’t feel like much, but he was familiar with the waters and knew he’d been barbed by a stingray. He told his buddies what happened and headed back to the boat. He pulled off his boot to find a quarter inch cut on the side of his foot. It took about 40 minutes to get back to the dock, and by that time the pain had become very intense. The pain was a burning, throbbing pain all the way from the cut up to his groin (ow) . “I tolerate pain well,” Hal said, “but it was almost intolerable pain by the time we got there. I was grimacing and whining all the way to the hospital.” At the emergency room, a kind, older nurse attended to him. The first thing she did was to put his foot in a basin of very hot water. Hot water is the first treatment for stingray stings because it denatures the proteins in the venom, causing rapid pain relief. Hal certainly appreciated the nurse’s help: “I literally asked for her hand in marriage because the relief was so great.” Nurses must love getting stingray patients! “What I learned,” Hal says, “is that if this ever happens again I will get back to land as quickly as I can and get my foot in the hottest water possible. That stops all pain.” Though the pain subsided with the right treatment, it took about six weeks of being on crutches and taking antibiotics for an infection before Hal was finally healed. Because infections are often a problem with stingray injuries, you should always get checked out by a doctor after a sting, especially if the redness and swelling does not go away.
Of course, the best thing to do is to avoid being stung in the first place. Conventional wisdom is to move slowly and shuffle your feet so the ray will know you’re coming. Stingrays are not predatory to humans; they only sting when they are cornered, startled, and, of course, stepped on. Protective boots are always helpful, though even the best gear may not keep you protected 100% of the time. Troy Malish of San Antonio learned the hard way that even stingray resistant boots are not necessarily stingray proof.
Troy was fishing for trout with a group of guys, and he was the only one who seemed to take any precautions against stingrays. Some of the guys were wearing flip flops, but he wore puncture-resistant boots because he knew that the cloudy water of the surf was bound to hide some rays. He had barely started out into the surf when he felt his foot sink into a hole. That’s when the ray got him just above the heel near his ankle. “It felt like someone stuck a screwdriver in my leg an wiggled it around,” he says. He immediately told his buddies he got hit. “You got a hit?” they asked him hopefully. “No, I got hit,” he repeated. That’s when one of the guys saw that the water behind Troy was streaked bright red with his blood. He had only been walking for about 30 yards to get back to the boat, but by that point his leg was cramping hard with every move. When he pulled off his boot, blood poured out and squirted from the wound. “This is not happening,” he thought. The pain didn’t feel like a burning point at the site of the sting, instead it was a pulsing cramping feeling that went all the way up his leg and into to his back.
Luckily, Troy was not far from the boat, and he had his friends there to help out. As you can imagine, his situation could have been life-threatening if he had gone out alone. The amount of bleeding made getting to the hospital even more urgent. One of the guys in the group had been with the coast guard, and he used a fish towel as a tourniquet to slow down the bleeding. After reaching the emergency room and soaking Troy’s foot in hot water to neutralize the venom, the medical staff cleaned out the wound and bandaged it up. The doctors told him that the barb had cut into an artery, which is why his bleeding was so severe. It took over a month for the wound to stop oozing and finally close.
One member of the medical team said that the weekend before, Labor Day weekend, they had ten people in there with stingray injuries before noon. During mating and nesting times, the Gulf-area hospitals see more stings, since there are more rays in the area and they are more defensive.
Not every stingray story has a painful ending. Captain John Little and his wife Alicia of Corpus Christi, Texas encountered a giant southern stingray and they lived to tell the tale. The Littles went to Port O’Conner to take their niece and nephew fishing for shark. They got a chum line going, and about 15 minutes after getting the hook in the water, the reel started screaming. “I thought it was a spinner shark because it came up to the top of the water.” He told the kids to watch the “shark” jump. “It was actually about a four and a half foot wide stingray.” An hour and 45 minutes later, they had wrestled the monster up to the side of the boat. Alicia cut the barb off, then they wrestled the ray into the boat for pictures before releasing it. “It was a heck of a fight, I’m pretty sure she weighed around 200lbs.”
Though he was sweaty and tired from the hard-won catch, they headed back and set yet another chum line. Less than ten minutes later, Alicia’s reel went off. They pulled the anchor again and took off. Alicia battled it for over an hour before they got it alongside the boat. At that point, the ray sunk down and they couldn’t get it off the bottom. The hook finally broke from the leader and they lost it. Alicia was amazed at the size of that giant stingray: “we were in ten feet of water and its tail was sticking up out of the water…that fight was tough!”
The Littles submitted the catch as a potential state record breaker, but the Texas Parks and Wildlife department doesn’t recognize stingray for catch and release. (Gee, wonder why?!) “My only trophy from the catch was the stinger,” Captain Little remarked. “When we let the ray swim off, I said, okay, where’s that barb? Then my seven year old daughter said, ‘oh, daddy, I threw it overboard. That’s what I always do when you cut those barbs of.’ I said, I know honey, but not all of them are 200 pounds!” Though they didn’t get their trophy barb to bring home, they have the video and the pictures to remind them of one wild day out fishing with the family. They never set out to catch a giant stingray to begin with, but now Alicia is looking forward to having another go at the big one that got away. For anyone who has ever suffered the pain of a stingray barb, heading out with Captain John Little could provide some much-desired revenge!
Moral of the story: it’s a lot more fun to hook a stingray than to let one hook you.
Jana Badger, Bronx NY
Resources: JustGoFishin Tales & Reports Podcast Show Episode #21, Giant Texas Stingray Tales
JustGoFishin.net
http://justgofishin.net/texas-giant-stingray-tales
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