HIAWASSEE – A 59-year-old Dawson County man lost his life Saturday morning in a boating accident on Lake Chatuge.
It happened just north of the boat ramp at the Georgia Mountain Fair Grounds in Towns County as a bass boat headed north turned into the path of another bass boat headed south. The second boat had launched out of the Ledford Chapel boat ramp on the North Carolina side of the lake.
The victim has been identified as Danny Duff. Members of the Yonah Mountain Bass Club, to which Duff belonged, said his boat was the first to depart the monthly club tournament. The club’s president said that he held off the start of the tournament until the pre-dawn light provided safe conditions, sometime just after 7:20 a.m.
Neither of the fishermen in the second boat reported any injuries, and said they did all they could to avoid the collision. They listed Suches as their home town.
Yonah Mountain Bass Club member Bryan Watson was in another boat which departed moments after the victim when he got a cell phone call from the victim’s partner, Brent Thomas of Cleveland who was in the passenger seat.
“We were on plane running the first time my phone rang and I honestly thought he butt-dialed me, Brent butt-dialed me” Watson said. “When we stopped the phone rang again: I answered the phone, it was Brent…and if I remember his exact words, he said, ‘You need to come over here, Danny's dead.’”
Watson said when he responded to the location he saw Duff slumped over in the driver’s seat. (In a bass boat the driver occupies the starboard, or right hand side seat.) The second boat was floating nearby. Watson said if you didn’t know a collision had just happened you never would have suspected it did.
Watson said Thomas had already called 911 and first responders were enroute to the Fair Grounds boat ramp. Watson and his partner towed Duff's boat to the ramp several hundred yards away where EMT’s were waiting.
Thomas said he saw the second boat just seconds before impact and dove to the floor of the boat, yelling a warning to Duff who was piloting the bass boat. Thomas said the second boat hit Duff broadside, coming partially across the deck of his boat and glancing off Thomas’s torso as he lay on the floor.
Initially Thomas told paramedics he was okay but within the hour began to experience difficulty breathing. An ambulance was summoned back to the Fair Grounds boat ramp and Thomas was transported to the Northeast Georgia Medical center for treatment.
Thomas’s condition is unknown at this time. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources responded to the site to interview witnesses and those involved. The situation remains under investigation.
