Last updated Friday, March 22, 2019

Bitter winds slapped water against the edge of the boat ramp March 6 as longtime commercial fishermen David Hultz, 51, and Earl Fogle, 53, set Fogle’s boat into the rolling Mississippi River water near Ashburn, Missouri. Hultz pulled up the ramp to park and got out of his truck, not knowing it would be for the last time. Snow fell on the gravel lot of DuPont Reservation Conservation Area, slowly filling in the men’s footprints. 

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They took off just a few hundred yards downriver in Fogle’s aluminum jon boat to set their nets in a pooled section of the river. Fourteen feet of net expanded between the trammel net’s lead line along the river bottom and the cork line bobbing at the surface. Routine for commercial fishermen is to surround a school of fish with the net then drive them into nets using the boat. Waves crashed up and down as Fogle’s boat crept toward the net, hiding the corks from his sight. 

Ranked as the country’s most dangerous occupation from 2007-2010 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, commercial fishing has an industry death rate 31 times that of the national workplace average. The CDC reported an annual average of 128 fishing deaths per 100,000 workers from 1992 to 2008 compared to four deaths per 100,000 among all U.S. workers. 

With the net hidden from his sight, Fogle unknowingly drove his boat right into their own net. Beneath the surface, hundreds of monofilament lines tangled around the boat prop like spaghetti around a fork. The men had only seconds to react before waves sent chilling water rolling into the boat, unable to budge. Speculation is that this is what caused the boat to go down, leaving Hultz and captain Fogle at the river’s

mercy in the churning water. 

When Fogle’s wife Marsha arrived home from work at nearly 3 a.m. to an empty house, she was immediately filled with fear. Her husband should have been home and tucked in bed hours ago. She then made the first phone call to report the men missing. 

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Reports from the CDC and Bureau of Labor Statistics focus extensively in discussion on commercial fishing deaths in Alaska and the East Coast, as the industry is much more prevalent there. While fishing on the high seas may claim more lives each year, commercial fishing in the Midwest has plenty hazards of its own. Big River Specialist Joe McMullen with the Missouri Department of Conservation said the biggest concern these fishermen face is fishing in the winter, as submersion in cold river water is extremely difficult to survive. Statistics from the CDC show more than half of all commercial fishing deaths occur following a vessel disaster, with another 30 percent a result of falling overboard. In Missouri, commercial fishermen are permitted to the Missouri, Mississippi and parts of the St. Francis River. McMullen reports an active 233 commercial fishing permits in addition to five permits for the commercial harvest of caviar across the state. 

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Commercial fisherman Allen Rost, 31, of Morrison, Missouri, met Fogle in an encounter fishing on the river with his father, also a commercial fisherman, back in 2002. Rost and Fogle kept in contact and developed a friendship over the following years, helping the other out when in a pinch and needing an extra set of hands. March 7 was no exception. 

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Rost tightened his grip on his cell phone as he received the news early the morning after the accident. All he could think was “I hope we find them,” knowing the chances of finding them alive were slim to none. “I hope we find them,” he thought. Wasting no time, he put his job on hold and hopped in his pickup, heading to Ashburn to join the search for his lost friends. Search and rescue crews endured 26 degree temperatures and 20 mph wind gusts as they searched for any sign of the missing men. Dive teams located a boat submerged underwater the day after the accident and confirmed it to be Fogle’s. Nearby, Hultz’s body was pulled from the water March 9. Search crews continued to hunt the river for an entire week before calling it off. Over a month later, the river is yet to give up Fogle’s body.  

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In another recent Midwestern incident, officials recovered the bodies of two commercial fishermen that disappeared November 6 on Minnesota’s Lower Red Lake after their boat capsized while gillnetting. According to the Associated Press, a third man from the boat, Dominick Johnson, 32, safely swam to shore in the frigid water and was later treated for hypothermia. After an extensive winter of searching the ice-covered lake, officials finally recovered the bodies of Deland Beaulieu, 29, and Jacob Kingbird, 17, March 21 and 22 respectively.

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Rost travels much of the state of Missouri to fish different areas of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. He harvests around 16,000 pounds of fish each month that turns into about 7,000 pounds of purchased fish. He works an average of 70 hours a week, fishing for catfish, buffalo, carp, grass carp, spoonbill and sturgeon. One of the first words Rost describes his occupation with is painful.

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“Pretty much every day we’re at Mother Nature’s mercy,” Rost said. “There’s some days where it’s ten degrees, snowing and everything’s froze and you’re miserable. Everybody thinks fishing for a living is enjoyable and fun, but it’s not. If I could’ve taken a different route, I might’ve when I was younger.” 

To help ensure their safety while fishing these rivers, McMullen advises commercial fishermen and boaters alike to bring dry clothes, notify people where they are going, have a way to communicate and a way to start a fire if needed.

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“There’s no real training you can do to make sure you’re gonna make it if you fall in,” Rost said. “You don’t know what’s gonna happen and where it’s gonna happen at.”

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Rost said the number one thing he can do on a daily basis to ensure his safety on the job is to keep a knife close by at all times. This is to provide a way to cut himself loose if a bad situation is to arise. If one is to get a foot caught in a net and be dragged in with it, a knife gives the hope of allowing one to cut free and come back up. Rost adds that if Fogle could have cut the net from his boat prop fast enough, the men might have survived. 

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He admits there have been times he didn’t think his boat would make it back to the boat ramp. He recalls a specific instance when he came up behind a barge with about 4,000 pounds of fish in his boat. With so much weight in the boat, it was just inches from sinking.

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“I came across a barge wave, and when I came up to the wave, it actually come through the boat and left the boat, and luckily, my boat didn’t go under,” Rost said. “You can prepare all you want to, but the day you go out there scared is the day you don’t go back home.” 

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According to the CDC, crewmembers in the U.S. are not required to wear personal flotation devices while working on deck. As far as life jackets go, Rost said it is not realistic to be able to fish while wearing one. In his eyes, the only thing they are good for in terms of commercial fishing is to increase the chances of recovering one’s body following an accident.

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“If you know you’re going down, grab one real fast and throw it on,” Rost said. “It sounds horrible, but that’d probably be one of the first things I’d do if I was going down, so my wife gets to bury me at least.”

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Rost’s favorite time of day is when he steps out of the boat onto dry ground, because he knows the day is done and he will make it home to his wife, Sara, and his three sons, ages 7, 4 and 3. Rost, who got in to the fishing business from his father, wants to be the last in the family to do it. He said unless his sons come to him one day asking to learn commercial fishing from him, he will encourage his boys to follow another career path. 

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In addition to the physical dangers of the trade, fishermen face financial risks as well. While Rost reports being able to make more money on a good day than some people in other occupations make in a week, others are not so lucky. He has been in the game long enough he has established solid ties with his markets, including Columbia, Missouri grocer Moser’s Foods where he has sold fresh fish for nearly a decade. Rost said he knows of a number of people who attempted commercial fishing but didn’t last long because of failure to establish those good connections to make enough money. 

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“Everybody understands they have to make money, and that is what drives commercial fishing,” Rost said. “That’s why it’s so dangerous, because everybody is so hard up to make a dollar, they don’t think of what can happen. Like with Fogle … he was out there trying to put food on somebody’s table and to make money for his family, and he paid the ultimate price of his life to do it.”