Michael Nelson thought his jig was hung up on a piece of wood.
It had snagged a limb, of sorts.
Nelson, who was fishing Sunday in the Jon's Pocket area of the Little Red River, reeled in a prosthetic leg.
"When I looked down from the side of my kayak, I saw a pink sole coming up," said Nelson, 38, of Heber Springs.
It was the pink sole of a Nike athletic shoe.
"I broke out laughing and said to the other guys, 'You won't believe what I just caught,'" Nelson said.
He posted a message about the prosthetic leg on a Facebook page called Heber News You Should Know. Within two hours, he had found the lost leg's owner.
It belonged to a woman whose family had a boating accident on the river in April, Nelson said.
"She doesn't have a new one yet, so she was pretty excited about getting this one back," he said.
She will be in Heber Springs on Sunday, and Nelson said he'll return the leg to her then. In the meantime, he's cleaning it up with some WD40 and CLR Calcium, Lime and Rust Remover.
"It's actually in pretty good shape," he said. "Some of the set screws are rusted."
Nelson said he's looking forward to meeting the woman and returning the prosthetic leg.
"I'm pretty glad to get it back to her," he said. "It's really the best catch I've had this year."
Metro on 07/19/2018