Nolan Calvin, Idaho fisherman, finds finger in trout, returns it to owner, Haans Galassi

From Priest Lake, Idaho comes a new fishing tale and a man’s missing finger.

Nolan Calvin was cleaning a trout from a fresh catch at Priest Lake when he came across a severed finger, details the Spokesman.com

Photo by Peggy Greb

The man placed the digit on ice and contacted the local sheriff’s office.

“The sheriff called me and told me he had a strange story to tell me,” said the Haans Galassi, a 31-year-old project manager for a Sandpoint-based software developer.

“He said that a fisherman was out on Priest Lake, and I pretty much knew exactly what he was going to say at that point,” Galassi said.

“I was like: Let me guess, they found my fingers in a fish.”

The lake trout caught Sept. 11 yielded just one of the four fingers he lost seven weeks earlier in a wakeboarding accident on the North Idaho lake.

Galassi actually had joked – prophetically, it turns out – about such an outcome when people asked if the severed fingers could have been reattached to his left hand.

“I’m like, no, I couldn’t find them. They’re gone, you know; they’re fish food at the bottom of the lake,” he said.

“I was just thankful it didn’t pull whole hand off,” Galassi said.

He has been undergoing hand therapy twice a week, getting used to textures and using his injured hand. He still has half of his index and pointer fingers.

“I can still grip things and grab and hold the steering wheel with it,” Galassi said.

Detectives managed to get decent enough fingerprint from the digit to match them to the man.

The sheriff’s office offered to return the finger to Galassi, but he declined.

“I’m like, uhhh, I’m good,” he said.