An 83-year-old fisherman who vanished after dark on Tawas Lake in Iosco County was found late Aug. 20 and brought safely to shore after a nighttime search by Michigan Department of Natural Resources conservation officers and state troopers.
The rescue ended at about 11:40 p.m., when the search team heard a voice and saw a flame from a lighter on the north side of the lake. He had been reported missing around 9:45 p.m. after his wife said he left in his boat about 6 p.m. and never came back.
That time gap mattered because the search unfolded in complete darkness on a lake where the fisherman had no cellphone, no flashlight and no other emergency equipment, and officials said his boat had no lights. He was also not wearing his hearing aids, another detail that would have made it harder to call out or respond to rescuers in the dark.
Searchers used a shallow water mud boat provided by an off-duty Oscoda Township police officer, then worked through tall wild rice that had trapped the fisherman on the north side of Tawas Lake. The vegetation made the final approach difficult because it hid him from view and left rescuers following only a voice and the small flicker of a lighter until they got close enough to pull him out.
He was uninjured, and the rescue closed the night with a simple ending: a lost fisherman was found before the search had to widen further. The question left behind is how he ended up stuck in the wild rice in the first place, a detail not explained in the report from Michigan State Police's Third District.
