Message in a bottle gets through dam, finds fisherman in Dixon

By ALEX STRICKLAND - Bigfork Eagle

Jerry Dwyer had almost tossed the crushed-up plastic bottle in the trash when something caught his eye.

Still sealed in the bottle was a folded bit of paper with a note and a nine-step tutorial on how to draw a helicopter from Bigfork third-grader Seth Adolph.

Seth had thrown the bottle off Sportsman's Bridge into the Flathead River in May after his second-grade teacher had his class make a message in a bottle. His message was simple, "whoever finds this bottle please write or call me, and tell me where you found it."

The call - to everyone's surprise - came from Dwyer who found the note on Aug. 19 while fishing on the Flathead River near Dixon.

"We got a big kick out of it," Dwyer said from his home in Huson. "We pick stuff up we see on the side and I was just about to toss it when I noticed there was paper inside.

"I thought, 'This can't be a message in a bottle.'"

As if making it all the way down the lake against the prevailing winds wasn't accomplishment enough, the bottle had to go through or over Kerr Dam, something PPL Montana spokesman David Hoffman said isn't as unreasonable as it sounds.

"What surprises me most is about the flow in the lake," Hoffman said. "We have studies that show the odds of fish making it through turbines is not that bad. I think a bottle getting through is certainly plausible."

Dwyer was surprised, as was Seth, who wrote in an e-mail to the Eagle that "my little bottle floated all the way down the lake and through the dam!"

Perhaps even more fortunate was that the person who found the bottle was someone like Dwyer.

"To have someone take the time to write back is really neat," said Seth's mother Catherine Adolph. "Seth was thrilled."

In Dwyer's letter to Seth he mentioned that both he and his fishing buddy were Vietnam veterans and so the helicopter drawings were especially enjoyable to them. He also enclosed a few wildlife photos, as he is an outdoor photographer.

"I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as we enjoyed finding your message in a bottle."