Fire and harbor officers took the Tide Breaker to search for the missing man. /Credit: Robert Willis

A local fisherman is safe after he left his fish camp and prompted a search effort in Captain’s Bay late Wednesday night.

Deputy police chief Mike Holman says public safety got a call around 1:30 a.m. Thursday from a man at a fish camp on the far western shore of the bay. The man said a friend at the camp had been drinking, and had taken a skiff and gone out on the water.

"They’d tried to stop him, but he left," Holman says. "And a few minutes after he left, they heard yelling -- they believed, somebody yelling for help."

Holman says harbor and fire officers took a Ports Department boat, the Tide Breaker, to look for the lost man. They were prepared to search the water -- but it didn’t turn out to be necessary.

"They were able to locate the individual staying at another camp, around three o’clock in the morning," Holman says. "He was intoxicated, but he wasn’t in need of any help."

The man had wound up at another fish camp, on an island in the bay.

"He claims he never did any yelling," Holman says. "[Rescuers] searched around the area, in case it was somebody else they’d heard possibly yelling for help, and they didn’t locate anybody else. Just the one individual."

Holman says that man had kept drinking once he got to the island camp, so rescuers couldn’t tell how intoxicated he’d been when he took the skiff out. That means the man won’t face any charges.

Holman didn’t release the man’s identity, but says public safety has frequent contact with him.