A tragic story - and a reminder that wader belts should always be worn…
Article published Nov 12, 2005
Angler drowns in Missouri
By ERIC NEWHOUSE
Tribune Projects Editor
CRAIG ? Despite the best efforts of rescuers, a fisherman slipped into the Missouri River Friday afternoon south of Great Falls and drowned.
Cascade County Coroner Bob Edwards said the 57-year-old man was from Calgary. His name was not released Friday evening.
“He had hooked a fish and, in an effort to dislodge it, dropped his pole, slipped and lost his footing,” Fish, Wildlife & Parks Game Warden Bryan Golie of Cascade said. “Then his waders began to fill up,” Golie said. “But they float, and they’re on the surface, holding your head down.”
Golie was driving up the frontage road toward the Dearborn River when he saw Cascade County Sheriff’s deputies and emergency medical technicians on the riverbank. A volunteer firefighter told him that someone in waders had fallen in and had been seen floating downstream with only the tips of his boots showing.
Edwards said the victim’s wife recounted that she was standing on a nearby bank when her husband slipped. She hollered at her husband to swim to shore, but then she ran for help when he submerged. The victim’s wife said she knocked on several doors at nearby houses before finding a man working in his yard, according to Edwards. Edwards estimates the fisherman had been in the water anywhere between 45 minutes and an hour before he was found.
Golie drove downstream for a few miles, flashers blinking, and then drove along the grassy shoulder of the frontage road, peering into the water. “This bend catches a lot of boats, and it’s about the right distance downstream,” he told a reporter who happened to be working on assignment with the warden Friday afternoon.
Suddenly, his truck slammed to a stop. “That’s him,” he exclaimed, grabbing his radio to call for an ambulance. The fisherman was floating face down in the shallow water, with the current pushing his waders into the embankment. Golie ran down the bank and pulled the victim out of the water. He was dragging him up the riprap when the ambulance arrived. Medics worked to revive the man with oxygen and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but there was no pulse or sign of life.
Still, they called for Mercy Flight, which met the ambulance on Interstate 15 south of Cascade. As deputies blocked the northbound interstate, the chopper touched down and a doctor raced to the ambulance. But it was too late. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene, and Mercy Flight returned home empty.
“We knew the approximate river speed and the time of the accident, which were the two things we had going for us,” Golie said later. “But time was the factor which was not in our favor,” he said. “I wish we’d been there sooner.”
The couple was on a weekend fly-fishing trip to Great Falls, Edwards said. He said the victim’s wife told him that her husband enjoyed fishing the Missouri River and would visit the area six to seven times a year.
Tribune reporter Chelsi Moy contributed to this story.