Finder's Keeper's?

It seems as thought I've been very fortunate pulling valuables out of the river this year. (I've still got a couple anchors I'm thinking about recovering too.) A few weeks ago I pulled an oar out of the river that belonged to a guide. He stopped me on the river and told me thanks and that he took it back from where I left it at the shop.

A couple days before that another guide friend, Tony V., told me about a client that lost his rod at Bernie The Billionaire's Rock. He said they put the rod down to take a picture of a fish and another fish grabbed the flies that were dangling in the water and took off with it. He told me that night what had happened and the next day, a mile down stream, I found it while rowing up along the Spite Hill River Access.

So today I probably pulled out the biggest prize of all. I was parked above a river wide riffle down by Pelican Point when a kayaker paddled by asking us where the take-out was. I told him it was just down stream about a mile and he should take the left channel and look for the out-house. He said thanks and I went on with tying a fly on my client's rod. The next time I looked up, I saw the gentleman getting launched from his kayak after hitting a huge boulder in the middle of the riffle.

At first I thought the guy would be able to stand up and walk to shore but he kept falling down in the fast moving water and then it got too deep and he was heading down stream; accept now instead of trying to get out he was swimming after his kayak.

I pulled up anchor and began rowing my ass off towards him. He was now about a hundred yards away. We closed the distance pretty quick and fortunately, his paddle was with his kayak so we grabbed it and reached out for him. He grabbed the paddle and we towed him to shore. He was pretty exhausted.

Once he was safely on shore, we pulled out and headed down for the kayak. It was still cruising down stream and I knew we had to get it before it got too far so once again I shifted the old pythons into over-drive and headed after it.

We corralled his boat and towed it to shore and helped him dump out the water. The guy thanked us for saving his life, which I think was a little more credit than we deserved but we did keep him from the inconvenience of waiting for a mile or so to eddy out. See? I'm not a total dick to the rec floaters...

Keep 'em where they live...