BEAVER — It was a clear day when three friends from Pierce County put their drift boat into the Sol Duc River Thursday morning and set out for a day of salmon fishing.
Hours later, after their boat struck a rock in whitewater and the river’s current forced the fishermen out of it, one man was dead, another man would hike for help and the third would wait out half the night, shivering in his neoprene waders, until a search party reached him on the shore.
“It was a total surprise,” 45-year-old Jim Miller of Roy, who was rowing the boat, said Saturday of the incident on the river.
“I never had any fear or any qualms about the stretches we were going through. No apprehension whatsoever.”
Miller, with Charles “Tony” J. Boyle, 61, of McKenna, and Terry Sebastian, 30, also of Roy — all friends from archery competitions — were out for a leisurely fishing trip where Boyle had been a steelhead guide 15 years before.
They had put in at the Sol Duc Hatchery, south of U.S. Highway 101 between Sappho and Beaver.
Last photos
Boyle, a grandfather retired from the military and from his job inspecting planes at McChord Air Force Base, caught about a 28-pound king, Miller said.
His friend pulled out his camera and shot Boyle grinning with his catch. Those were the last photos of Boyle ever taken.
The men were about two miles downriver when they reached what local guides call “Sh-t Corner.”
Longtime Forks river guide Jim Mansfield, who also was on the river that day, describes the area as a swift rapid with rocks “the size of Volkswagens” that boaters must dodge at 30 mph.
The trio’s boat came into the rapids and struck a rock that jostled the boat around and pushed it mostly under water, said Miller, who has been a drift-boat fisherman his whole life.
They stayed in the boat for about 50 feet, but as more water came in, the boat was pushed out from under them, sending them into the frigid water.
