Hero fisherman Gus Hutt stands with his wife Sue where he saved a baby's life on Matata Beach.

When a baby floated past fisherman Gus Hutt at a Bay of Plenty beach, he thought the little boy was a doll.

He reached out and grabbed him by the arm and still thought it was a lifeless lookalike.

"His face looked like porcelain with his short hair wetted down," Hutt recalled, "but then he let out a little squeak and I thought, 'oh God, this is a baby and it's alive'."

It was luck that Hutt was there to save the 18-month-old who had escaped from his parents' tent at Murphy's Holiday Camp early on October 26.

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Usually, Hutt heads straight out from the camp to fish from the beach, but on that Friday he decided to walk 100 metres to the left, towards Tauranga.

After returning to check his lines at 7.15am, he saw the seemingly lifeless baby floating in the water.

"He was floating at a steady pace with a rip in the water. If I hadn't been there, or if I had just been a minute later I wouldn't have seen him," Hutt said.

"He was bloody lucky, but he just wasn't meant to go; it wasn't his time."

Hutt's wife Sue ran to the parents' tent after the holiday camp managers said they were the only ones staying with a baby.

"She ran to the tent and just shook it and asked, 'where's your baby – we just pulled one from the sea' and the mother just screamed," Hutt said.

Emergency services arrived with the Matata Volunteer Fire Brigade treating the boy for 15 minutes before an ambulance arrived to take him to Whakatāne Hospital.

The baby had pulled the zip up on the parents' tent while they were sleeping and crawled underneath the flap before making his way down to the beach.

"[Later] I followed his tracks down to the beach and saw his little footprints in the sand where he walked in," Hutt said.

"It was about 15m away from where I had my rod, so he wasn't in the water long. I must've just missed seeing him go in."

When the parents stopped by to thank Hutt before returning to their home in Matamata, he said you wouldn't have thought anything had happened.

"He was wriggling trying to get down to have a look at everything, he was just a lovely, cheeky little fella."

The Hutts are still a little shaken after the incident but are grateful Gus was there at the right time.

The Matata fire brigade has advised that when camping with children parents should ensure zips are out of reach.