I agree with peregrines method, had to use it last spring. however, I?ll relate a story, I was fishing with 2 friends on a fly-in trip to northern Ontario, we were fishing for BIG pike. at the time 2 of us, tim and me, were in 1 boat trolling large crankbaits( I know should of been using a fly) and tim snagged a branch. he pulled the branch up to the surface, so I reached down to grab it and the lure shot off the snag and lodged in my ear. it embedded to the bend, in the top half of my ear, into the cartilage where it meets the scalp, but did not penetrate all the way through. on its way the hook bounced of my sunglasses, cut my cheek then into the ear, thank God I was wearing sunglasses, that's it for my public service message for protective eyewear. couldn't push it through so back to the cabin. the cabin manager asked if I wanted to call for a plane, I would lose the rest of that day and the next, so I said no. so we, my friends and I, tried some amateur surgery. To prep I drank 5 shots of tequila and washed my hair really well. we had butadiene, scalpel, sutures, but no dikes. cutting through cartilage is very hard, it sounded like there was a buzzsaw in my ear. But finally a hole big enough to push the barb out was made and it was cut off. Put some butterfly bandages on the cut and on my cheek and I was good as new. However I was too drunk to back out fishing so we decided to drink some more, now that I allowed my surgeon to had some. The camp manager came by to look in on me and was impressed that we did the job ourselves. I guess he did not expect a few soft american, cityslickers to be able to handle it.

as moral is always be prepared when away from help, but it's better to avoid troubles than to have to deal with them.