RedactedNarrative: On June 30th, 2019 at approximately 0350 hours I (Warden) was notified by Marion County Dispatch of a fisherman was missing and that his boat had been found beached. 
  
  I put my patrol boat on the water about 0415 with a Marion County deputy and we started searching for Operator. We located his boat that had been run aground on the north side of the lake where nighthawk road runs into the lake. 
  
  The boat was a blue and white fiberglass ranger. The water was about seven-foot high and the boat was held in place by some trees. The GPS units on the boat were still lit up at this time. The kicker trolling motor throttle was forward and the boat was in the run position. There was nobody around the boat, so we started patrolling the shoreline looking for Operator. Operator was believed to be the only one occupying the boat the day before. 
  
  We looked for Operator until daylight. Once the sun came up, we retrieved the boat and towed it to the Marion cove boat dock. At the dock I took pictures of the boat and took the boats information. There was no damage to the boat.  At this time, I also did a vessel inspection and found that there were no accessible life jackets on Operators boat.  I also seized the GPS unit off the boat. At this time family and friends of Operator''s started to show up with boats to help look. 
  
  One of Operators fishing partners let us use the power source off his boat to hook up Operators GPS device because Operators batteries were dead on his boat. This is where we found the track Operator took the day prior while fishing (track shown above). 
  
  Operator also sent a video to his fishing partners the day before showing how he can set his GPS and motors to troll a straight line, hands free. The straight north and south track Operator took on the image above, is directly over the old nighthawk roadbed that runs through the lake. This roadbed is a hotspot for fishermen and Operator was known to fish it. His partner then informed us that they never fish north of the river channel on the road bed. 
  
  This gave us a block to start looking for Operator along that line. We knew he made the last turn northbound and never corrected anything past that so he was between the last turn north and the river channel. The GPS on Operators boat also provided us that the incident had to have happened between 1400 and 1600 Saturday June 29, 2019. 
  
  The boat was moving at 2 MPH at those times being driven by electronics.  Multiple agency boats ran side scan, not finding anything on the search area until July 1, 2019 around 0900 Operators body ended up floating to the surface and was found by some fishermen. Operator was only wearing underwear at the time. We retrieved the body approximately in the same location shown above just to the right of Operators last boat track. At this point we took the body to the Marion County Coroner at Hillsboro cove and released the body to her. I asked for a toxicology report with the autopsy. The body was then transported to Frontier Forensics In Kansas City for the autopsy. 
  
  I received the autopsy results back on august 30 2019. Operators cause of death was drowning. A sample of 51mg/100g of Ethanol (alcohol) was taken from Operators liver tissue for the toxicology report. No alcohol was found on Operators boat.
  