the Courier, Savannah –
Search efforts continue Monday afternoon for a missing high school fishing team after their boat was found overturned on the Kentucky Lake side of Pickwick Dam this morning.
Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency spokeswoman Amy Snider-Spencer said the fishing team is believed to have put their boat in on the Pickwick Lake side of the dam and was last seen around 6:45 p.m., Saturday.
A TWRA agent found the overturned boat today between 8-8:30 a.m., in the vicinity of the Tennessee River bridge at Savannah.
To get to that downstream location, the boat had to either lock through the dam, trailer around the dam, or go through a floodgate at the dam.
“Authorities didn’t get the call that they were missing until Sunday at about 9 p.m.,” Spencer said Monday, adding it’s unclear at this time why so much time passed.
According to Spencer, the preliminary TWRA investigation indicates that a 43-year-old male and two 15-year-olds from Obion County, all part of a high school fishing club, are the three reported missing.
She noted that the families of the missing have all been told of the situation.
“Our investigation indicates this was a local tournament, organized from Obion County with all Obion County fishing teams, not like a big Bassmaster event or anything like that,” Spencer said.
She said preliminary reports from the adult organizers indicate the missing team’s boat was having engine trouble at the start of the event.
“What we’ve been told is that maybe their engine wouldn’t warm up or run right, so they were going to try and fish with just a trolling motor until they could get their engine running smoothly. The other teams left them at the dock to go on and fish, and that’s the last they were seen,” Spencer said.
She said that when the other teams returned to the dock, they assumed the missing team had already gone home.
Obion County Director of Schools Tim Watkins told The Courier Monday morning, “We’ve not spoken with any of the students involved in the event yet, nor any of the adults. All of the adults who were there are in Hardin County right now trying to assist in the search.”
Watkins said the tournament was not intended as an overnight trip, and he and other school officials are “still trying to determine how they weren’t missed until so long after the trip, but the assumption was they had already left because of the engine trouble.”
He said one of the adult organizers on the trip notified him and authorities that the fishing team was missing.
(PHOTO: Rescue personnel on Monday morning recover a boat near the Tennessee River bridge at Savannah. The boat was used by a missing Obion County high school fishing team. TWRA says family members of the two missing teens and one adult have been notified of the situation – courtesy the Courier, Savannah)
