Anyone have any recent, local dives to report?

[Omicron]

Red Granite is excellent right now - did two dives there today and had a great time.

Viz above 50' was only about 5', but below 50 it opened up very nicely - a guesstimate would be at least 20' of viz. We found the boat at 70' with absolutely no problems at all. The other cove of the quarry was a little "foggier" than by the boat, but it was a really enjoyable day of diving!

[FreediveWI]

Mendota didn't work out today because of the wind. :'(

Jumped in Lake Monona instead and just brought the speargun because the vis didn't llok too promising for photos- big mistake! The water cleared up as i got down a couple of feet and the fish where everywhere! I saw all the normal sutff, crappie, fat bass, walleye, 4' long muskey, ect. I also saw 7 gar fish iin a range of sizes. I ususally only see one of theses in a day, but today they where evereywhere.

Just when I was starting to get a little bummed because I didn't bring my camera I started running into sturgeon! I saw at least 4 of them and could get right next to them- actually grabbed on to one for a little bit and then let go as he slowly swam off. He didn't seem the least bit bothered by my presence- because he knew I didn't have a camera! :'(

It turned out to be a great dive with more fish, and more types, than I have ever seen before on a single freshwater dive. Next time the camera comes with no matter what.

Jon

[Swimjim]

Becareful Jon, bringing a camera on everydive is a good way to put a jinx on the viz.

Jim

[Chris H]

We stopped at Lannon Quarry and a diver crawling up the stairs told us visibility was "pretty good". We looked at each other, shrugged, and decided to go to Elkhart Lake instead.

It was opening day of fishing, and we were a little worried about boat traffic. We arrived to see the police boat being covered for the day, and didn't really see many other boats on the lake. I'm pretty sure it was because the visibility was so bad that the fish couldn't see the bait and all of the fishermen went home. Visibility was 3-4 feet between 0 and 35 feet deep, and the water temperature in that range was about 50F. We saw a couple of Walleye and Matt saw a Musky. Not a horrible dive, but not a very good one either. We probably would have been better off staying at Lannon.

[FreediveWI]

After the great dive I had with the Sturgeon a week ago, without a camera :'(, I was glad that my buddy, Ted, actually got some shots of them.

I was too sick to dive, but he was able to get in. Here's the story:

[Omicron]

Did two dives in Red Granite on Saturday.

Our first dive was okay. My friend George had a huge hole in his glove, so his hand got a little numb during the dive. Viz was "okay" down to about 20 feet. From 20+ feet to about 70 the viz was crap. I kept running into George because I couldn't see him that well. The 70-90 foot range was decent viz - nothing great, but okay. You could see the whole boat at 80', but not much farther than that. We made it down into the deep pit, and it was utter blackness. Maybe 6 inches of viz, tops. I did make it a little deeper than I ever have before in Redgranite - 117'. But I never really saw anything there

Our second dive was short and shallow. George didn't want to go deep again because of the cold. We still had 1000psi in our tanks after the first dive, so we just goofed off in the shallows for a half hour, playing on the shallow boats and with some other junk we found.

Not a bad day of diving, but the rain really trashed the visibility I think. Hopefully it gets a little better soon.

Surface temps were around 48, past the thermocline (which is noticeable now...) was 40. The thermocline was right around 25 feet.

[Vtach]

We dove at Red Granite on Sunday and we had pretty much the same conditions. I was pretty surprised how good the visibility was given the amounts of rain that we have had over the last couple of days. The fish must have been feeding because there were quite a few fisherman there. We inadvertently pissed off a young fisherman. We surfaced shortly after swimming through "his" fishing area. He yelled at us "THANKS FOR SCREWING UP MY FISHING GUYS!", and I responded, "sorry, but if it is any consolation to you we did not see any fish where you were fishing", he said "I WASN'T FISHING RIGHT THERE, I WAS CATCHING THEM FARTHER OUT!" (as he pointed to an area 30 feet from where we were). I said "sorry, we didn't see you fishing there", then he mumbled a couple of things and jumped on his bike and rode off. It was actually pretty comical from a divers point of view, probably not from the fishermans though.