Dead man fishing

When Robert hired me, we would occasionally play golf. He had a lot of interests, and one of them was fishing. Since I hadn’t fished much since college, I followed his lead. We probably fished several times, but one early trip stands out.

It was a warm day in the summer. Robert and I decided to take our daughters fishing at Dawson Lake. Our daughters were about ages 9 and 10. We drove over the dam to park in a small lot. We planned to bank fish where there were few trees to snag the girls as they cast.

As we got out of Robert’s car, a large woman came running up from the bank. “Help, help” she said. “I can’t move him”. Robert ran down with her and I followed telling the girls to stay by the car. As we got near the lake we saw a man slumped over in a lawn chair holding a fishing rod. Robert looked at him and felt his pulse. He said to her, “I’ll go get help”. He said to me as we walked up, “He’s dead”.  

The girls don’t remember the fishing trip. Robert’s version, and probably the more accurate one, is below.

“Here is how I remember that particular trip.  I don't think it was the one with the girls.  As I remember it I wanted to try using the canoe with two guys.  While we were getting it off the station wagon, we kept hearing a strange wailing cry.  It sounded like a wild animal in distress more than a human.

The most memorable part of the whole thing was that eerie, twilight zone like, sound.  This went on for a few minutes before we saw the woman trudging along the trail on the shoreline.  She was overweight, slow, waving her arms in the air, and clearly in dire distress.   

It took a few more minutes to understand what she was saying between her sobs and gasps.  She finally conveyed something bad had happened back down the path and I took off to see what it was.  When I came on the old gentleman he was sitting in his chair with his fishing pole.  He appeared to have dozed off and was not responsive.  I checked for a heartbeat, pulse, breathing.  He was showing no responses and his chest and arms were already hardening up.  There was no give in his muscles.  It was pretty clear he was dead and had been for a while.”

There was a station wagon in the parking lot. There were wash tubs in the back of the station wagon with many catfish on ice. I stayed with the girls as Robert drove to the local restaurant to get help. He called to LeRoy which is about 8 miles from the lake, so it took the volunteer department quite a while to respond. The girls kept wanting to see what was going on, but I kept them up in the parking lot.

When the fire department rescue squad arrived we left. The woman apparently went with the ambulance.

Several days later, Robert got the rest of the story.

“Apparently the old gent had not been taking his blood pressure meds as he should have.  They had been eating the wrong food and having a good time as well.  Not so good for someone with high blood pressure.  

It also came out that the old gent and his girlfriend would scamper off from time to time.  Supposedly he told his wife he was going fishing with a buddy, but the buddy was the girlfriend and the wife was not deceived.  So, the wife was not too happy about any of this and thought the old boy got his just desserts.”  

When the police finally reached her by phone to come and retrieve the car, she told them to “let it sit”. Apparently she wanted to strand “that woman” in LeRoy.

After several days of sitting in the hot July sun, one can imagine the smell of that car with the tubs of catfish.