Exiled,
I wanted to tell you this story yesterday, but its too long to type on my phone...
I mentioned in my previous post that we fished all day Sunday. We went to a very small lake near my house. Our original plan though was to go to the Verdigris channel Saturday evening to net some shad to take to a different lake on Sunday for hybred bass fishing.
I had never been to this particular location on the channel - Rogers Point recreational area, if you care to look it up. It is above all of the locks, about a mile below the entrance to the Port of Catoosa.
As soon as we put in (at around 5:00 PM), we knew right away that we would not be able to fish. The water was flowing way too fast for my trolling motor, and there was tons of debris. I mean, huge stumps and limbs. We even saw a couple of entire trees floating down the middle of the river. I found that if I stayed close to the bank that I was safe to run, so we shot up river to do some exploring.
There was not another soul on the river, until about 15 miles up river (@ hwy 20), we came across a group of kids, five dudes and two girls, all claiming to be 21, floating out in the middle of the channel among all the flotsam. They had a tiny (maybe 3x6 ft) one man fishing platform with a plastic lawn chair and an ice chest, a couple of swimming pool floating rings, a large nearly deflated air mattress, and another ice chest they rigged up with batteries, a car radio and a couple of 6x9 speakers, and ONE LIFE VEST!
They had put in something like 30 miles up-river, just below the Oolagah Lake dam at 10:00 AM. They were out of beer and out of drinking water. One of the girls was straddling a log. We threw them a rope and dragged them out of the center of the channel to get away from all of the wood. They all climbed in the boat with us and we dragged their flotilla back. I was worried I was going to get in trouble for overloading my 8-man boat and for not having life vests for everyone.
I couldn’t tow them any faster than idle speed because it was swamping their "vessels", so it took us a couple of hours to get back. When we did arrive, it was right at dark, it had started raining with a little lightening, and this particular ramp is not lit up at all. Even had they made it that far, they a) would have never seen it in the dark and b) had no chance of extracting themselves from the river current. Their next stop would have been the locks, and I imagine that would be a very, very dangerous place in these conditions.
Those kids got very lucky that we found them! As fast as the river was flowing, they would have been halfway to New Orleans before anyone started to look for their bodies!