St. Jude’s Classic Kentucky Lake in Western KY.
Team Tournament
96 Boats – Missed weigh-in. Disqualified.
Kentucky Lake was extremely rough on this day due to high winds.

On the way back to the weigh-in, my partner noticed a young girl frantically waving her arms for help. We immediately headed towards her when we noticed two other people in the water.

The boat, a small paddle boat, had been swamped by the high waves. The girl was sitting on the back of the paddle boat, which was the only part that was not submerged, with out a life jacket. Her brother was in the water with out a life jacket treading water. Her Grandmother was in the water holding two youth life jackets to help keep her afloat.

My partner and I were able to rescue all three, thank God, with out injury to any of them. We tossed them our throw cushion and our life jackets to keep them afloat until we were able to pull them out of the water. Now I know why a throw cushion is required by the coast guard and water patrol.

It turned out that the Grandmother took her two grandkids for a paddle boat ride at the mouth of a bay where they were camping. The high winds and the current pushed them out into the main lake where the high waves swamped their boat. They were actually in the channel when we got to them.

Unfortunately, they only took two youth life jackets for three people. That could have been a very life threatening mistake. The current and waves separated two of them where they could not hold on to the swamped boat to help them stay afloat.

The sad part about this story - - - at least five boats went by them with out even slowing down. I guess getting to the weigh-in was more important to those fisherman than helping people in distress. Not one bass boat even stopped to help after we started our rescue, they would veer around us and just look.

Anyway, to finish a long story, we took all three of them safely back to a dock close to their camp. We stayed with them for a few minutes to make sure they were absolutely ok. After that, we took our time getting back to the ramp, released our fish, took our boat out and reflected on the day. In our eyes this was our best finish ever at a tournament – dead last!