re: Guide Boat Capsized on Toledo without a licensed captain

which guide service?

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this guy goes into some details

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He's good friend's with the guide I use, and says "It could have been me or one of the guides I talk to...", so I assume it's not my guy.

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they were staying at Wildwood Resort, and the guide service featured on Wildwood's website is Living the Dream.

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It's not LTD.

That's the info I got.

Several of the white perch guide boats have cabins around Toledo and Rayburn. Storm came out of northwest and had some big rollers coming across the lake. One person reported 6-8 ft., which might be exaggerated, but at least gives an idea.

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They aren’t running those at the guide services, damn

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you made a blanket statement about pontoons..... dont get mad when you get called out.

Yeah, no way 6-8

I was at Toledo Tuesday. My camp is in Toledo Village far South end on west side. Wind at my camp was NNE and howling. My boat in lift sits 4 feet above water level when lake full and waves were hitting against back of my boat. My guess would be 40-50 mph winds. Story I heard was that the boat was going into the wind went over a wave and came down with front of boat submerging into next wave. The front popped up like a cork as another wave came and lifted the front high enough that wind caught the boat flipping it over backwards. The 4 survivors were able to swim to an island that was very close to them.


My guess as to why Toledo is more dangerous than other lakes is that you have to follow boat lanes due to stumps. This limits your ability to navigate rough waters because you can’t change your direction based on the direction of the waves.

ETA if I was looking to be critical I would say this. We were packing up to leave and around 11:00 I looked at the radar on my phone to see we were getting ready to get about 2-3 hours of red coming over the south end of the lake and be unable to stay in front of it driving back to Baton Rouge. We decided to let it pass and dive home at 4pm. I have a 24 ft Champion bay boat and no way in hell would I have been out on the lake. I will say that the strongest winds came about 30 minutes in front of the line of weather on the radar so the captain likely thought he had a bit more time than he did

I was at Pirates Cove when it happened. My observations-

We were on the dock with kids swimming and began to hear thunder in the far distance to the west-northwest. I checked the radar to see a well formed storm heading our way but still a good distance off. I then told the kids they had a few more minutes. About 10 minutes later I had them get out and gather our things that we didnt want to get wet or blown away. About 10 minutes more, the thunder was getting closer and a gentle wind started from the west. It slowly built and 10 more minutes the wind increased to 25-30 from the west. From first thunder to bad wind was a solid 25-30 minutes. And the dark sky's approaching from the west were obvious the whole time. Maybe they had a mechanical problem but there was ample warning to get off the water in time.

Maybe another 20-30 minutes later first responders started to show at the launch. A lot of people showed but it took a good while for them to get a boat in the water.

When I heard the news of what happened, I was borderline pissed. Because the captain had plenty of time to avoid the situation. The boat had visible signs of not being seaworthy. And because I was sitting there looking at my bay boat in the water the whole time while a pile of first responders had just stood around with their thumbs up their butts.

The barge that capsized had a large metal enclosure built onto the back of it along with a window unit and I assume generator. I had always noticed how rear end overloaded they appeared. Squatting badly from all the crap piled on the back. My speculation is the rear end was overtaken by a following sea as they were traveling with the wind, back towards the marina. A party barge is typically pretty seaworthy but the excess weight, up high and in the back, probably contributed to it flipping over. The two that died were recovered quickly so that tells me they had life jackets on but were stuck inside the enclosure.

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It has to be ROUGH to capsize a pontoon boat

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Not when you’ve added a cabin to the vessel.