Sask. fishermen go 'part MacGyver, part Red Green' to retrieve sunken cellphone

Two avid Saskatchewan fishermen went to extremes to save a cellphonethat had taken an icy plunge.

Their ordeal started when Luc Lemoine (who is a CBC employee)was ice fishing with his daughter Emily and his pal Jason Matity on Last Mountain Lake north of Regina.

Matity has a fishing show called matitysgetfishing.com. This meantthe grouphadunderwater cameras with them.

Lemoine was leaning over the ice hole withhis phonein a breast pocket.

"It was on my chest and I bent over to adjust something in the ice hole and it went right in without even hitting the edge," he said.

The phone was easily replaceable, but the photos stored on the SD card were not.

"My dad passed away in June and I'd gone to see him in May and we'd taken some photos together," Lemoinesaid. "I wanted those photos back because there was no way I could replace them. And stupid me I hadn't done a backup."

Underwater cameras help rescue cell phone from Sask. lake

6 years ago

Duration 1:03

Jason Matity and Luc Lemoine were recently out ice fishing when - "plop" - Luc's phone took a trip the bottom of the lake.

With their cameras they could see the phone sitting on the bottom of the murky lake about nine metres down.

"(The phone) was a leather case, so you thought if you could get a hook in there, you might be able to just snag it," said Matity. "But all we did was kept stirring up mud and muck."

After a couple of hours fishing in vainthe two friends went home to make a rescue plan.

A couple of days later they were back at the lake with 25 metres of plumbing pipe and two giant ladles.

"We were definitely part MacGyver, part Red Green because we were using a lot of duct tape," Lemoine said.

They had taped a camera to the pipe. When they lowered it into the lake they found a curious observer.

"There's a perch just staring right into the camera going, 'Hmm you guys aren't going to catch me today because you've got other work to do,' " Matity said.

The rescue mission did not start well. Their early attempts at scooping up the phoneended up burying it in the silt.

It took them six hours, but they were finally able to retrieve the phone.

"The feeling of success was as good as catching any fish I've caught before," Matity laughed.

They still didn't know what they could salvage from their mission.

Lemoine put the SD card in a bucket of riceand waited fretfully for six days before putting the SD card into his new phone.

"I fired it up and right away the phone recognized it had an SD card in it," he said. "I went and looked for my folders and there they were.I had all of my pictures back.

The first thing he did was backup his photos.

Matity pointed out another benefit of the mission.

"We have a lovely how-to video of how you get your phone back out of deep water," he said.

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Have you gone to great lengths to get back something you've lost or return something you've found? Share your story with CBC's Blue Sky. E-mail bluesky@cbc.ca or call into the Friday phone-in 1-800-716-2221.