Copper River lets this guy go

Dipnetter wins fight for life after Copper River slipPLUNGE: 10 mph river current tugs at man as several watch from banks unable to reach his canyon location.

Wasilla resident Patrick McPherson survived a fall into the Copper River on Monday in part because he used a rope to tie himself to the bank. McPherson slipped and fell in while carrying his 29th salmon up from the ledge. "When they tell you to tie up, you better tie up," he said. (Photo by STEPHEN NOWERS / Anchorage Daily News)

By S.J. KOMARNITSKYAnchorage Daily News(Published: June 17, 2006)

WASILLA -- One minute, Patrick McPherson was slinging a chrome-bright Copper River sockeye salmon into his net.
The next he was in the 40-degree water, being tossed around like a rag in a washing machine by a current that roars and churns through Wood Canyon at 10 mph..
"I remember thinking, 'That's it, I'm gone,' " McPherson said this week.
Like thousands of Alaskans, the 54-year-old Wasilla resident had journeyed to the Copper to dipnet salmon. It is an annual rite of summer for many. With 11-year-old son Brian in town, Patrick headed for the river Sunday, planning to start fishing at 7 a.m. Monday.
With a strong run of fish flooding into the river, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game had given dipnetters a bonus 10 fish on top of the standard family limit of 30 starting on that day. Hoping to net a big catch, the McPhersons hired a charter boat in Chitina to take them downriver from O'Brien Creek and drop them on the otherwise inaccessible east bank of the big river.
About 10:30 a.m., McPherson sent his son back by boat to their truck and had a charter boat move him to a new spot down in the canyon where the rock walls climb for hundreds of feet behind the river. McPherson was deposited on a rocky ledge about a half-foot above a churning hole. He fished there alone, and did well for the first few hours.
As McPherson remembers it, he had netted his 29th fish just before the slip. He pulled the net out of the water and slung it to a spot about four feet above. This is what he had been doing for hours.
Once the fish were secure above, he climbed up, clubbed them, and then hung them on a string. He started to clamber up behind this one and had just reached up for a small ledge when his hand slipped, he said. His foothold gave way at the same time.
And suddenly he was in the water.
"It just happened so fast," he said. "There was no room to reach out and grab anything."
For a moment, he was completely submerged. Then he felt a jerk and popped to the surface.
A safety line he'd tied to a tree on shore had stopped him from being swept away in the river. He grabbed at the short nylon rope tied around his waist and managed to maneuver himself near the shore. There, he wrapped the rope around his hand and tried to climb out.
He managed to get one arm up on the rock, but he couldn't pull himself up on the slippery ledge. He hung there in the freezing water, trying to decide what to do next.
He worried the rope might break if he put all his weight on it. Meanwhile, the silt-laden water kept pulling his legs out from underneath him and pushing him toward the churning hole, he said.
"You feel it like tugging at your legs," he said. "I just felt like it was going to suck me down there and I'd never come up."
Across the river, by then, dipnetters working the waters from below the now-abandoned Copper River Highway had seen the accident and were scrambling to try to do something, but it was impossible to cross the raging current. Some bystanders on a cliff, however, did find a boat beached on the highway side of the river and yelled down at its owner that a man was in the water.
Across the river, hooked off on the end of his safety line, McPherson said he never panicked, but he thought a lot about Brian.
"I thought, 'You can't take me now,'" he said.
He started praying.
"I tell you I never prayed so much in my life," he said. "I said, 'Good Lord, give me enough strength to hold on, and make the waters not so rough.'"
The second part of the prayer apparently never got through, he said.
At one point, the still-live sockeye and the net slid off the cliff above and went past him, after the fish had flopped its way to the lip. McPherson thought about grabbing it, but not seriously.
When he realized he couldn't get himself out, he started yelling at two dipnetters across the river.
One finally looked up, he said. A short while later, he heard one man fire a gun several times to try to attract attention. Nothing happened.
What he couldn't see were others all along the cliffs trying to get help to him. They were waving madly when a Hem Charters jet boat came roaring down the river past McPherson never noticing him. McPherson, who had seen the boat come around a bend and go past, wasn't sure he was going to make it.
Then skipper Mark Hem saw people waving on the shore and pointing, spun the boat and headed directly for McPherson.
"I thought, 'How is he going to get me out of here?' '' McPherson said. "I was just so beat.''
Hem was the one who had dropped him off. Roaring back now, he pushed the nose of his jet boat into the cliffs and held it there with the inboard engine rumbling. McPherson said Hem grabbed his hand and told him to hang on. Finally Hem and another man came on shore and were able to drag McPherson onto the rocks.
Even then, dragging that first leg free of the water was a struggle.
"It was like pulling it out of a vacuum," McPherson said.
Once on shore, McPherson was shaky but amazingly unchilled.
His legs were bruised, and water squirted out of holes that the rocks had cut in his knee-high rubber boots as the current pounded him against the shore. He had been in ice-cold water for 10 to 15 minutes.
Looking back, he said, he realizes he was tired when he fell in. And although he was tied off, he clearly hadn't tied the rope short enough. Also he'd been careful not to let water drip on the ledge he was standing on, but a glove he was wearing had gotten slimy and slippery from handling fish.
McPherson said he's incredibly thankful to Hem and others who helped him.
They not only saved him, but also retrieved his fish and gave him his blue and white nylon rope. He said he told them to leave it.
"They said, 'No, this is your lucky rope,'" he said.
McPherson, a wildlife control agent for the U.S. Agriculture Department and former circulation manager in Wasilla for the Daily News, said he managed to drive home after the experience. He was exhausted for the next two days and had a hard time sleeping. He kept replaying the fall in his head.
"When you think of something like that, you know it just could be it," he said.
As far as dipnetting again, he doesn't think he will ever make a return trip to the Copper. If he does, however, he said he plans to tie off with a shorter rope and wear a personal flotation device. He urges others to do the same.

Reporter S.J. Komarnitsky can be reached at skomarnitsky@adn.com or 352-6714. Daily News outdoor editor Craig Medred contributed to this story.

sorry folks-as of 4:30pm the picture won't load. will keep trying. ~FishTaxi