'I caught an iPhone!' — man hooks an iPhone lost in a river for 8 months

Iphone On Fishing Hook (Image credit: Jason Robinson)

What you need to know

A man out fishing managed to hook an iPhone that had been lost for eight months.
The iPhone was returned to its owner thanks to a photo that was with it.

A man out fishing the Waccamaw River in Horry County, SC managed to hook more than he bargained for when his line rose from the water with an iPhone attached. It turned out the iPhone had been missing for eight months before it was found — and successfully returned to its owner.

According to local reports, Jason Robinson was out fishing when he caught the iPhone — it looks like an iPhone X or iPhone XS, to me. After taking a photo of it to send to his wife, Robinson put the iPhone in his boat and continued about his day. It was only upon later inspection that he realized there was a photo in the iPhone's case — and the hunt was on.

While cleaning mud off the phone, he noticed a photograph showing a young woman carrying a young man in her arms as she stood on a board walk.Robinson decided to take a chance and see if social media could help track down the couple.

Just five minutes after posting the photo to Facebook, Riley Johnson was identified as one of the people in the photo. It transpired that her husband had lost the iPhone and photo when out fishing last Thanksgiving — so around eight months ago. The photo itself was taken in 2018, when the pair first started dating.

Damaged Iphone Photo (Image credit: Riley Johnson)

Unfortunately, the original report doesn't say whether the iPhone itself survived the ordeal, although it seems unlikely. Maybe it's time the owner checked out our list of the best iPhone deals and picked up a new one!

This isn't the first time that an iPhone has been found months after it went missing. Sometimes people get lucky and they're still working just fine, too!

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.