Lake Mendota

[FreediveWI]

My buddy, Ted, and I went out spearfishing in Lake Mendota today.

As it turns out, I should have left the gun at home and brought my camera- one of the few times that I have been caught without! :'(

We measured out the vis with my wreck reel and found that we had 25' of horizontal visibility! Yes, we saw fish, but they were not the kind that we could leagally spear.

There were walleye, bass and northern's all over the place. Everytime we dropped down we saw more fish. THe water was so clear that we saw many of them from the surface as they thried to hide on the bottom.

The water was 52 degrees and the sun was shining bright on the clam water. It was really an awesome day.

We covered 2-3 miles in four hours of diving. I found one dive light, that still worked, and a couple of nice anchors, but no way to carry then back with me.

The lake only stays this clear for another month, in July your lucky to get 2' of vis, so you need to get out there soon to enjoy it.

Jon

[gzscuba]

Hi Jon,

Where did you enter at? I've been trying to figure out the best place to start diving Mendota. I'm kinda leery of the boat traffic around the Memorial Union, but have heard a some good things about Governor's Island (I think that was the name of it). I've gotta read the 'Our Four Lakes' book again.

Thanks,
-Greg

[FreediveWI]

We found this nice little beach beyond second point. We were driving along and saw a road that wetn down to the water. I parked and looked over the edge of the little bluff adn my jaw dropped when I saw the vis! We entered there and swam back around second point, almost all the way to picnic point, and then turned. We dove for a little over 4 hours.

This past winter I entered at the Limnology center when there were no boats on th Lake. We dove off of the union in January, right before she froze over, and had a great dive. The vis was very good and we found more junk, but not too many fish, on that dive.

My dive buddy is a biologist at the limnology center which is why we met there.

I have never dove off of Governor's Island, but did do a little freediving in the "hole" out from there last month.
That was done off of a boat and not a shore dive. Yesterday was a shore dive.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

My buddy, Ted, and I went out freediving in Mendota yesterday. We took out a boat to dive the deep hole first- we only found 75' and not the 81' we were looking for.

After that we headed over to the abandoned underwater habitat which sits at 45'. We dove there for a while before moving into the shallows to hunt for dinner.

It was a great day with 20'-25' of vis and 54 degree water temps down to 75'. I stayed fairly warm in my Picasso 3mm freediving wetsuit. I got a little chilled towards the end- after about 5 hours in the water. Freediving wetsuit kick butt over all other types out there. ;D

Jon

[FreediveWI]

Here's my attempt at using my panoramic function on my digital camera.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

That seemed to work out OK so I'll try another one. 8)

Jon

[FreediveWI]

We took to the shallows, around 10'-15', to hunt for dinner. The fish were everywhere!

Jon

[FreediveWI]

The coolest fish of the day was not the huge Northern and walleye that seemd to be everywhere, but rather the baby long nose gar fish that Ted caught by hand.

I didn't get a shot in the water because I had my gun at the time, but here is a shot of it back at the lab.

Ted was going to put in in a university aquarium, but we ended up letting it go instead.

THese fish are pretty wild. They actually have an armored type of skin and a mouth like a gator.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

Here's a shot out in deep water. This picutre was taken from about 35' down so that you can see how clear it was.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

This last shot is one of me coming up from 75'.

The last time we were out it turned black at 70'. Yesterday you could see a good 20' in all directions at the bottom- it was just mud down there.

Jon