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It happened to me in the summer, from fishing for two days and nights straight through in a float tube. The water wasn't even that cold at the lake, like a real nice 78F. Since I was kicking myself around with the fins that kept me warm enough to not feel cold at all in the water and drinking a lot of whiskey while catching fish.
Fortunately for me my brother was with me and he was in his canoe out of the water and dry. On the second day we stopped trolling and just dropped anchor in the middle of the bay and fished off the bottom, which is what started to slowly sap my body heat away since I wasn't kicking anywhere near as much anymore, just the occasional turn when reeling in a fish. The reason we didn't leave was that the fishing was the best we'd ever experienced in our entire lives, it was one fish after the other for two days straight and since there was no bag limit on the catfish we ended up keeping a hundred each.
It was my brother who noticed I was having issues when I was slurring my speech long after I'd been out of alcohol, me i felt just fiiiiiiiiiiine. But he was concerned enough that i listened to him anyway and we made for the shore. That was when I noticed all my strength was gone and while i was kicking to move it was waaaaay harder than it should have been and my brother tied a rope to my float tube and helped pull me in to shore. On land we discovered I couldn't walk, I didn't have the strength for it so my brother at that point figured out what was wrong with me and started a fire to warm me up and went to get my dry clothes from the car.
If he hadn't of been there I'd likely have kept fishing until I died. Not a bad way to go...but glad he was there.
