SASKATOON -- Fishing trips often produce elaborate tales of the fish that got away.

For one Saskatoon woman, it was her phone instead.

Angie Carriere was celebrating her 50th birthday at Waskesiu Lake with friends and family.

She warned her daughter to be careful with her phone, to which she got an eyeroll.

“About 10 minutes later, I have the phone on my knee, the tent blows up, I go to grab the tent and down it goes into the hole,” Carriere told CTV News.

She was in disbelief but looking down the fishing hole through the crystal clear water, she could see it sitting on the sand. She relies on the $1,300 iPhone for all aspects of her health and wellness business and was devastated knowing she hadn’t backed up the phone recently.

Carriere thought she was never getting her phone back, but had a change of heart two weeks later.

It was on the third trip back to Waskesiu where she and her friends searched out the exact spot which was since covered over by snow.

Armed with a fish finder and a magnet attached to a fishing line, they persevered for about two hours. They even had to get a fishing hook to turn the phone over so the magnet was exposed and able to be picked up.

The next morning, she plugged in the device, having little faith anything would happen and assuming she’d just be taking a broken phone to Apple and getting a new one.

“I didn’t put my phone in rice, I knew it didn’t work. The next morning for whatever reason, a little while later, was walking by and I saw the Apple symbol which was shocking at first, and then when I did the swipe up it went to the screen saver and I thought, ‘what on Earth?’”

There was some minor condensation on the camera which has since gone away. Everything seemed to be intact.

“There’s nothing about the phone that doesn’t work, it’s amazing.”

Regina Tech expert Curtis Paradis agrees that this is an anomaly.

“There’s only so much and so long that those rubber gaskets can last. So 30 days in presumably freezing cold water, it’s interesting to see the phone can last that long.”

Paradis says tests on this particular iPhone 11 indicate it should only last in water two meters deep and for 30 minutes before being permanently damaged.

Carriere’s response: “Thirty minutes? Are you sure it’s not 30 days?”