This is the last year I try to go fishing on July 4th weekend. Way more trouble than it's worth.
Headed out to Taylorsville late Sunday night do a little bow fishing then catfish for a few hours. The storm blew in before we ever wet a line. So i pulled my boat up on the bank, tied off and thought I would be just waiting out the storm and lightning.
My plan went to crap after everyone else decided to bring their boats in because of the storm. A pontoon boat was coming in at Van Buren and motor stalled at ramp. To try and make the story short they basically ended up on the shallow flat going up the river. A runabout was already in the water and went to help them. He ended up catching his motor on fire trying to pull them out of it. The fire was put out after a couple of tries but by then one of the guys on the runabout bailed and for some reason panicked and tried to swim to shore in the direction of the ramp. I can't say for sure how far he was but with the water lever up some I would say it was too far for a midnight swim. At that point we had no choice but to untie and go get him regardless of the storm or not.
We got to him but missed with the throw but was just lucky enough to get close enough for two of us to drag him in the boat. Lucky that no one else bailed out of the boats but we were not sure at that point and looked for more swimmers.
We got to the pontoon and runabout were the runabout owner was in the water and basically keeping both boats from drifting farther on the flat. He had them in deep enough water to hook on but I could only bring one in at a time. We told the guys in the pontoon to put out an anchor and do what ever they had to keep it from blowing farther onto the flat.
By the time we dropped off the swimmer and the runabout the pontoon had blown what looked like the opposite side of the lake and there was no way for us to go get them.
They eventually had to wade the flat to bring it back for me to bring them in but it was a long crappy night and I am done with these holiday weekends.