Drinking, Driving and Fishing

My brother Bill and I used to go lake trout fishing at Hall's Lake in the Haliburton area of Ontario. He had a homemade plywood boat about ten feet long with a 2.5 Viking outboard on it. During one of our trips we had just finished trolling around a rocky point which was bringing us back toward the road when we heard a God-awful screeching sound followed by a huge splash.

We turned toward the highway and couldn't believe our eyes. A car had plunged into the lake, somehow missing the huge rocks lining the road. It had come to rest about forty feet from shore. The car had obviously been traveling very fast when it left the road.

We hurried over to the slowly sinking car. The driver had managed to crawl onto the roof by the time we reached him. He appeared to be all right and the first thing he asked was, "Do you think you can pull my car to shore with your boat?" We got him safely into our little boat and somehow managed to keep straight faces as we dropped him off where he had unintentionally launched his car. He was no worse for wear and apparently had simply dozed off while driving home for the weekend.

As we continued trolling we could still see the rear bumper of his car sticking out of the water. As silly as it may sound, it remains one of my most memorable fishing trips.