Lake Couch Search and Rescue Operation, ...with happy end

What’s wrong with my boat set-up shown in this picture? Keep reading and you’ll find out
It’s a two day little saga of ours so grab a coffee or beer and keep reading…

Day 1. Oct 30

It’s all started last Saturday, Oct 30,, when I and two of my fishing buddies went to Lake Couch for some fall fishing. The day was going by nicely. We caught a few nice fish and were enjoying our company and fall weather and scenery. Then we dropped one of our friend back on the launch around noon as he needed to head back to his cottage to close it up for the season .

After we dropped him we ran back to one of our spots and on the way there THIS happened…

On the first picture above you can see that my rod holders are located on the same side where the windshield door opens to , so this causing the windshield door to lean on the fishing rods in the holders but I always took them out before the door is opened. It’s a pain in you know where so I wanted to move the holders to the other side of the boat but you know it’s always a next time project.

When we reached our spot , I shut the motor and asked my buddy to open the windshield door and get the trolling motor down. The boat was still moving, it was a bit wavy and we had two rods in those holders (one rod was mine and another one was buddy’s) . When he opened that windshield door, the handle got stuck in the reel and when my buddy was trying to lift the door and free it the boat jumped on a wave and both rods went flying out of the holders into the water (the boat was still moving forward). I immediately turned on the motor and put it in reverse but it was too late – the rods sank to the bottom. We searched unsucessuflly for about half hour but it was overcast and windy so we could not see much although the depth was only around 8-9 FOW. We tried casting and dragging heavy lures on bottom but everything was fruitless.

The day was completely ruined as we had $700 worth of fishing gear on the bottom.

Day 2, Nov 5.

The whole week we communicated with each other thinking of what should we do and finally we decided to attempt a rescue operation with the help of the third buddy’s underwater camera.
I had a clear track on my fishfinder map where we lost the rods so we decided to pick a sunny day and go for it. This day was today.

We came prepared with an extendable window cleaning pole, duct tape, home made small wire anchor on the rope and Marcum underwater camera.

Long story short It took us about 15 minutes to find the rods on the sandy bottom and retrieve them one by one.

The fishing day was done successfully before it even started . Having caught our rods we were so excited that we did not care how our fishing will go., although we caught a few nice pikes and bass to seal the day deal.

Moral of the story is: don’t be lazy in getting the things done on time and have good friends around to help you out.

... We found them now can we retrieve them?

first rod is coming up....

Yeah baby!!! We got them back!!
My buddy is happier than if he would catch a 60 inch musky

Nice pike caught later in the day on a jerkbait...

The lure...

Buddy's bass...

My bass...

Another pike...

largie...

One more pike...

Now that was worth the read. Awesome story. Lucky you have the tech toys to mark your spot. That is a big price tag of stuff if it was not recovered. You had some good luck all around today. Very nice fish pictures turned out great.

Now that's what I call a successful day on the water today. Found and retrieved the two rigs, plus landed some very nice fish as well. Congrats to you and your friend, and kudos to the buddy that let you use the camera!!

Thanks, CM.
Yeah we were lucky that it was shallow there and no dense weeds, otherwise we would have been screwed.
Take care and good luck to you!