Wounded veteran Jack Wiseman lost more than the catch of the day in a fishing tournament in South Florida over Memorial Day weekend.
A fish pulling extra hard on his reel popped out his prosthetic arm, Fort Myers, Fla., TV station WINK reported.
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"All of a sudden the hand snapped off the prosthetic device, still hooked to the rod, and the rod and the reel and the hand went down into the water," Wiseman told St. Petersburg, Fla., TV station Bay News 9.
The captain of the ship tried to stop the fish, but it was too late.
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"We watched it happen," Rudy Salas, a friend and fellow wounded veteran, told WINK. "And we said, 'Did you see that, his arm's gone.'"
In an odd stroke of luck, another fisherman in the tournament later hooked the same fish. Wiseman, who was one of eight Wounded Warriors invited to fish with professionals in the Tarpon Tournament Series at Boca Raton Grande Pass, was delighted to find his hand and rod still attached, according to Bay News 9.
"For us, it was funny, and that was the biggest thing," Salas told WINK. "We said, 'You're gonna be a legend, you're the only guy that lost an arm out here yesterday.'"
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