GRAND FORKS, N.D. _ Bob Brott and his cousin, Gary Soucie, had just wrapped up a great day of walleye fishing on Lake of the Woods near Garden Island on Monday afternoon, July 31, when their day took a big turn for the worse.
Fortunately, they lived to tell about it.
As Brott recalls, they'd caught a limit of 17- to 19-inch walleyes, and he was steering his 1974 Glasspar powered by an 88-horse Evinrude outboard into a stiff southwest wind for the 15-mile trip back across Big Traverse Bay to Long Point, where they'd launched.
Rough waves, to be sure, but better than the previous night, the first of their trip, when Brott opted to stay on Garden Island rather than risk venturing back to Long Point in rough water.
He figures the waves that Monday afternoon were 3- to 4-footers.
"I've had it in rougher water than that with no problem," Brott, 55, said. "I knew it was going to take a couple of hours."
They were 1{ to 2 miles south of Garden Island, when Soucie, 58, went to the back of the 17-foot boat to switch gas tanks and discovered the boat was taking on water.
"I was in disbelief," Brott said.
He went back for a look and saw the bilge pump was running but had gotten plugged and wasn't pumping; the boat was filling up fast.
Brott, a home improvement contractor from Eden Prairie, Minn., said he was trying to figure out how to remedy the problem when a large wave washed over the stern and turned the problem into a disaster.
"I grabbed a 5-gallon bucket, and I was bailing trying to get that back up a little bit more," Brott said. "I just couldn't keep up with it."
They had just enough time to put their life jackets on before the boat capsized. Soucie, of Fairfield, Neb., tried calling 911 but couldn't get his cellphone to work, and Brott had lost his phone in the mayhem that ensued.
Charter boats that make daily treks north by that time had returned to resorts along the south shore, and there wasn't another boat in sight.
So there they were, Brott and Soucie, straddling an overturned boat as it drifted northeast along the south side of Garden Island toward the Ontario border.
No phone. No marine band radio.
Nothing.
