TEXAS CITY — League City fisherman Kenneth Wall said his days of boating alone are probably over, after doing everything he could to try to save a fellow fisherman who died.

The name of the victim, a 57-year-old man who was likely a resident of Porter, was being withheld until his family could be notified, Cpl. David Viel, a Texas City Police Department spokesman, said.

“It is unknown if he had a heart attack and fell or just drowned,” Viel said.

Wall, 52, launched his boat early Friday and set anchor near a sandbar called Mosquito Island a few hundred yards north of Anita’s bait shop on the Texas City Dike.

He was within a 100 yards of four wading fishermen when he heard someone in distress shortly before 11 a.m.

“Somebody yelled, ‘Help! Help!’” Wall said. “I immediately pulled anchor, but before I got to him, I saw his floating (bait container) flip upside down, and he was in the water.”

Wall yelled for assistance, but apparently no one heard him. He was unable to pull the man from waist-high water into his boat.

“He didn’t have a life jacket on,” Wall said. “I tried to talk to him, but he was unresponsive.” As the wind carried Wall’s fishing boat into deeper water, he reached over the side and put a life vest on the man.

“I held his head out of the water to keep his face up,” Wall said. “I hung onto him with one hand and called 911 with the other.”

Firefighters launched a rescue boat and brought the man to the boat ramp at 11:10 a.m.

Capt. Robert Ebert of the Texas City Fire Department said rescuers performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the man as he was brought ashore. An ambulance rushed him to Mainland Medical Center.

Ebert said the man was wading in an area of the island where there is a 35-foot drop-off.

“There’s a deep hole on the west side of Mosquito Island, and we warn people to wear a flotation device,” Ebert said.

Currents flowing around the man-made dike — which the Army Corps of Engineers built in 1911 to protect the ship channel — created the island and the hole, Ebert said.

“It’s a good fishing hole,” he said. “I’ve fallen in it myself, but if you fall in and your waders fill up ... we lose a couple people there every year.”

Wall, who hadn’t fished off the dike in a couple of years, retrieved the man’s belongings and fishing equipment and gave them to police.

Wall said he knows CPR but couldn’t start it without being able to pull the man inside the boat.

“It’s such a helpless feeling,” Wall said. “I seldom go fishing by myself. This might be my last trip. I don’t know if I could have saved him if I’d had some help.”