Be safe on the water

Wear your PFD's. A good friend and fishing buddy had a "health incident" recently but thankfully on land in the middle of town and close to medical response.

That being said, we went fishing days after the "incident" and I demanded he bring along his new auto inflate PFD. If he had a recurrence and fell overboard, at least he'd float. I still have no idea how I would wrangle him back into my boat. I figure I'd just grab him and hold on while I attempted to call for assistance on my cell phone.

If your fishing partner fell overboard on the Ohio river and was unconscious or non-responsive, how would you solo handle the situation?

More perils and worries of getting older and boating.

[QUOTE="Tyme2fish;534804"]Wear your PFD's. A good friend and fishing buddy had a "health incident" recently but thankfully on land in the middle of town and close to medical response. That being said, we went fishing days after the "incident" and I demanded he bring along his new auto inflate PFD. If he had a recurrence and fell overboard, at least he'd float. I still have no idea how I would wrangle him back into my boat. I figure I'd just grab him and hold on while I attempted to call for assistance on my cell phone. If your fishing partner fell overboard on the Ohio river and was unconscious or non-responsive, how would you solo handle the situation? More perils and worries of getting older and boating.[/QUOTE]

Good to bring this up from time to time. Probably eventually it will stick with some folks. I got inflatable last year and did actually where the entire time I was on the River Sunday. The water was in the high 40s. I still don't wear it on a calm day on the lake. When netting bait, that would be a good time to where it, if you think about it.

Nice post..............very true also

I wear my PDF all the time while on the water. Even though I used to be an excellent swimmer and Water Safety Instructor that taught swimming and life saving classes I still wear a life jacket when out on the water.

The lakes I fish these days are only about 200 acres in size at the largest and it's a short distant from the boat to shore at any one spot. Not like out on Patoka or KY lakes. But still I wear a life jacket.

One never knows when a health problem might incapacitate one and or your fishing buddies. So it's good to be prepared. I keep my cell phone locked up in the boat inside a water proof security box. I keep it charged up before going out in the boat. I have good cell phone service in all parts of the lake I fish too. I checked that out before hand. I can easily drive all around the lake via roadways that surround the area where the lakes are located. And I can see the cell phone town when on the lake.

With the new type of PDF that self inflate there is no excuse not to wear on of these. They are a little pricey but what is the value of your LIFE?

I would love to see the price of these self inflating PDF come down a bit though. I plan on buying one of them myself. Right now I'm wearing the old fashion type that I know will work for me.

I've already fallen out of the boat one time and it held me up in the water. I found it very hard to swim with it on though. It creates a lot of drag in the water. Of course I was wearing my tennis shoes or flip flops at the time and had shorts, T shirt and Hat on as well as my Radio Head Phone and was holding onto my Fishing Pole at the time. I only lost a pair of sun glasses and the radio head set. It got wet and was ruined anyway. I save the fishing pole and my dignity once I got back to the boat. The boat was blown away from me faster than I could recover and swim to the boat. Luckily the boat was blown up on a island point that was only about 25 yards away. If the wind had been blowing from the other direction I would have had to swim about 300 yards across the pond to the other side. So I was very lucky that the boat stopped on the edge of that island close to where I fell in.

I can't swim like I used to these days.

I use to swim a mile every day when I was a life guard but that was over 40 years ago when I was only 20 something.

REACH ROW THROW and then as a last resort Go. IE don't get in the water if you don't have to. As you too could become another victim.

Reach out to the victim with a life jacket or a pole or you hands and or your legs.

Throw a life jacket or buoy to the victim and pull them back to shore or the boat with a rope.

Row or dive a boat or raft to the victim to save him.

And as a last resort and only if you are trained in the art of life saving do you ever attempt to perform a swimming rescue. And these days they use rescue tubes to keep the victim away from the rescuer.

For you see the one thing that the victim wants to do is keep his or her head above the water so that they can breath. A panicked victim can easily climb up on you and push you down in order to keep their head above water. If that happens just submerge deeper and they will let go and try to get their head back up above the surface. Since you are sinking they won't want to go down with you. Take a big bite of air before you submerge though. This is taught in the life saving class and practiced over and over again until it becomes second nature to the life guards I trained.

Never attempt to swim and rescue someone in deep water if you are not prepared to do this though proper training. Because you may too end up as a drowning victim. Perhaps if it's a small child you could perform the rescue without incident but if you are going out after a full grown adult then it's a different matter. People who are panicking have super strength as their adrenaline is flowing strong and they can have super physical strength for a short period of time.

The next time you go to the beach or pool look around and try to identify the life saving equipment that's kept by the pool. Sheep's crooks and ring buoys and reach poles are just a few of the tools you will see around the local swimming pool.



[QUOTE=Tyme2fish;534804]Wear your PFD's. A good friend and fishing buddy had a "health incident" recently but thankfully on land in the middle of town and close to medical response.

That being said, we went fishing days after the "incident" and I demanded he bring along his new auto inflate PFD. If he had a recurrence and fell overboard, at least he'd float. I still have no idea how I would wrangle him back into my boat. I figure I'd just grab him and hold on while I attempted to call for assistance on my cell phone.

If your fishing partner fell overboard on the Ohio river and was unconscious or non-responsive, how would you solo handle the situation?

More perils and worries of getting older and boating.[/QUOTE]

This needs to be posted on the fishing forum as well. I'm sure not everyone checks out the off topic board.
I fell out of the boat last summer. I'm 23 years old.... Yup I'm still a pup so I'm pretty confident in my swimming ability. But as I fell out the boat it quickly drift away and I wasn't fast enough to keep up. I wasn't wearing a PFD and was absolutely exausted after slowly making my way to the nearest bank. It took a bit to flag down another boater to help as well. I consider myself very lucky and hell if I was maybe a couple years older I'm not sure if I would have made it. Since the incident I've invested in a pfd. One time was to many times for me.