Another almost as compelling reason is as follows:

I was a young lad just learning the ways of the levelwind reel. Never really did get the hang of it but that's not the point. I was on the Sandy with my father and a friend of his, and I was sitting away from the stream digging out yet another rat's nest of mono. If this were television we would now split back and forth between my father's friend making a cast and a nice close-in shot of my father's left ear.

Shot #1: friend goes to cast and on the forward motion gets hung up on what he thinks is brush behind him.

Shot #2: hook with chartreuse yarn embeds itself into the hard stuff above my father's left earlobe.

Shot #3: friend gives rod a good forward tug to try and free it from the "brush" behind him.

Shot #4: father's head jerks forward as the barb goes in deep enough so that it cannot be backed out easily but not far enough to bring it forward.

Shot #5: father spends the next several hours continuing to fish with this yarn-clad hook in his ear.

Luckily it was winter steelies we were fishing for, as it kept the bloodflow to that region of the ear to a minimum. He didn't bleed until he got to the hospital.

De-barb your hooks. If not for the sake of the fish, do it for your fellow anglers.