August 10, 2024

The Blue-Ribbon Bow River stretches some 70 kilometers from Calgary to Carseland and the jeweled waters of any reach will hold trophy trout, both rainbows and browns. I like to fish the upriver run, what I call the city run, because it saves time and money, but my buddy Russ likes to fish the bottom end.

"Big rainbows down there," is all he will say.

On our run today I could hear loud people, "What's all the ruckus goin' on downstream?"

Sound can be difficult to track on the river. We could hear, but couldn't see anything yet. A loud, excited group, four or five canoes gliding with two smaller rafts, had sailed by earlier and I was thinking maybe it was them, but these shouts sounded somehow more anxious than happy.

"Yeah, don't know." Russ had caught the urgency too and was scanning downriver. "Sounds like it's coming from the left side somewhere."

We came around the bend and there on the left near the rocks we saw them. Two men: a father and son, had capsized and were hanging onto a raft for dear life! They were in a bad, bad spot where they had dropped anchor. Fast, deep water pressed against an outside curve at the base of a cliff. Erosion continually releases boulders from the cliff and both the shoreline and the river bottom here were littered with them. The anchor was wedged in between boulders and the stern of the raft was pinned upside down to the surface of the river by the anchor rope. The swift, churning water tossed the raft from side to side, up and down in the flow.

Mother ... had made shore some 200 or so yards downstream.

The men knew this. I didn’t. The father, 75 years plus, was wearing chest-waders that had filled with water from the top, his right arm was injured, and he couldn’t swim. They knew there was no escape. So they just held on, the son holding his father from slipping away and waited and … prayed for help.

We tried to position the boat to load them off and were able to swing the son to shore but the water was too fast, the father too weak to reach for the gunnel of my drift boat. So he did the right thing, the only thing he could do. He hung onto the raft with everything he could, becoming more exhausted each moment, singular to the task of staying alive. Life jacket or no, I could see he would have sunk like a stone if he'd have tried to make to the rocks.

When the current pushed us down, we crossed up the river and pulled in below them again. Another fly fisherman, in a one-man pontoon, stopped to help. This man and the son, who pushed back out and now stood on the bottom of the raft, managed to pull the father up on top too. The elder man lay there curled as if asleep, unmoving, head pressed into the fabric of the raft.

Seemed easy enough to me what to do, so I grabbed a throw-bag and a knife before I stepped onto the bank. Safety equipment is so important though we always hope its use is never necessary: A proper throw-bag, a sharp knife, the spare oar I purchased when I bought my boat 10 years ago. This gear helped save a man's life today.

Another drift boat anchored in on the shore. A man and his wonderful hound dog came to help.

I opened some rope and cast the bag to the son. The man in the pontoon tied a good knot to the raft and said, "Here, toss it back to them."

He made a good throw, lots of rope in the air, and I caught it.

"Okay. What now?" asks the son.

"Do you have a knife?" I held mine in view, a lock-blade.

"No," he said. A quizzical expression seemed to lighten his face. He was thinking. Thinking is good.

"You'll have to cut the anchor rope, and then we can pull the raft and your dad to shore," says I and then, "Here, catch." I made a decent throw over the water, center below his chest, and he caught it in two hands.

"Good hands!" I remarked. A compliment when someone is upside down in the river, his father's life is in peril, and you've just told him he has to go back into the water and cut a rope is always a good idea. He relaxed ever so slightly, opened the blade of the knife, dove into the water and cut the rope.

There's always a way, until there's not, and this way was good. With three men holding the rope, we let the river do the work to swing the raft gently to the shore. Safety! When I pulled the father out of the river, his waders bulged with harboured water. For a thin man this made him heavy. Still on his knees, he was too fatigued to stand or even crawl up the embankment. Father I just held him under the arm.

The lightweight raft flipped surprisingly easily right side up with the aid of two men, self-bailed, then sat up on the water as pretty as any magazine photograph. It was missing an oar though and, of course, the cause of the accident. My spare oar fit nicely into the raft's locks and the anchorless crew floated on down to Legacy Island, stopping only to pick up Mother at the point of land where she, waited too. Where she waited never met, never knowing what fate might allow.

I reached Legacy, anchored and walked up through the tall grass to the parking lot where I met the son and the man with the pontoon, who’s net we’d retrieved. Mom and Dad were recovering in the truck. Emergency services had been called and they responded. There is a small river-channel crossing to reach the parking area at Legacy Island which they could not cross.

I shook hands with the son, picked up and stowed my spare oar, and drifted down to Carseland, casting for rainbows along the way.

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