Thomas Rhett Thinks Karma Was to Blame for Fly Fishing Injury

During a trip to Colorado in August, Thomas Rhett revealed to fans on Instagram that he had hooked himself in the back of the leg while fly fishing, posting a slideshow of photos of himself on the water. The snaps began with an image of Rhett fishing, followed by a photo of the singer holding his catch and posing with wife Lauren Akins.

In the last shot, his wife is looking in in concern as bent over to examine his leg. “The day started great!” Rhett’s caption read. “Then I hooked myself in the back of the leg. Had to push it out the other side, cut the barb off then pull it back through!”

He went into more detail about the situation with his record label, explaining that he had had “three or four Miller Lights, let’s just preface it with that.”

“And I was trying to cast into the wind, and I’m not a super-experienced fly fisherman and so when I casted back and went forward, the wind took it and just whipped it right into the back of my leg,” Rhett explained. “And I started limping over to my wife and I was like, ‘So what do I need to do?’ She’s like, ‘You’re gonna have to push it through the other side.’ And I was like, ‘This is gonna be terrible.’ But thank you for Miller Lite because I think it would have been a lot more painful without it.”

The 30-year-old added that he thought his injured leg was a little bit of karmic retribution. “I honestly think it’s payback cause my grandfather was the one that taught me how to fish – and there was one time when I was about nine years old that I slung my rod back and I hooked him right in the neck with a treble hook,” he recalled. “I watched a doctor pull it out, and so when I hooked myself right in the back of the leg, I looked at the sky and said, ‘God, I deserve every bit of this.’”

Rhett and his family have since transitioned from late-summer fishing to celebrating the holiday season, and he recently hosted the annual CMA Country Christmas special alongside his wife for the first time. The couple’s three daughters, Willa Gray, Ada James and Lennon Love, also made an appearance.