Lake Mendota

[FreediveWI]

A shot of the boat.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

My freediving buddy, Ted, is scoping out rock bass hiding in the base of the habitat at 45'. They sure can hide when they know that their on the menu.

jon

[FreediveWI]

We've been out spearing/freediving in Lake Mendota the past few weekends. The temps have gradually fallen from 54 two weeks ago to 48 last weekend. On the plus side, 48 degrees was still almost 20 degrees warmer than the air was last Saturday!

This vis has gotten much better now that fall is here. There was over 20' of vis two weeks ago, but htat has been knocked down to around 15' with all of the rain we got recently.

We've gotten lots fo fish, mostly crappie and blue gill, but have seen a ton more that we can't shoot- like pike, walleye, musky and even catfish.

Last weekend we spent over 4 hours in the water, with a short "hot water" break inbetween to recharge our wetsuits. We've been getting too many fish to bother bringing the camera so nothing to post right now.

Lake Monona still has crap for vis and isn't worth jumping into.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

With the nice weather we had today we got out on Mendota to do a little spearing/freediving today.

I played around with my new camera mount on my speargun. Now I can shoot pictures of the fish as I shoot them.

Actually, the real reason I mounted the camera to the gun was to take pictures of all the fish we can't spear- like this walleye.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

THe water was 40 degrees and we spent a good hour and a half spearing.

We almost got skunked becasue the fish were very spooky today. In the end each of us got a fish. I saw a lot of really nice size bluegill and crappie hiding in the weeds, but could never really get a shot off because they would take off almost as soon as you spotted them.

After an hour and a half we started to get chilled and went in to warm up. Just sitting on the bottom for 1-2 minutes at a time, in a wetsuit, while trying not to move as the fish come in really sucks the heat out of you.

All of the fish we shoot now get weighed, measured, and have a skin sample taken to be used in one of the university's projects. The fact that we take home the rest to eat is just a small bonus. ;D

Here's a shot of my buddy driving us back in. We wear the masks while underway since we don't have any sunglasses on the boat. This helps to keep the wind out of our eyes, and also allows us to hit the water as soon as we get to where we are going.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

After a quick warm-up in the hot showers, we decided to leave the guns behind and grab the monofins for a little play time in deeper water.

We originally wanted to hit the "deep hole", which is really only 80' deep, but the winds picked up too much and we had white caps on the lake. We moved in closer, to around 50', and decided to set a training line and play around with the video camera.

It was amazing how warm we stayed while actually swimming around! ;D If we had spent the day just freediving, instead of spearfishing, I know I could have lasted 5-6 hours without a problem.

We had to call it quits after about an hour because our guy in the boat was cold, but we were pretty toasty in the water by this time.

Here's a shot a friend took of me and my new monofin.
Next time I'll let him use my wide angle lens and get a better picture.

jon

[dfreeman]

Jon,

Looks like some great diving fun. I like the idea of monting a camera on the speargun. Lets you take pictures and handle the camera easier. Still can then get a shot when it comes up.

Good idea.

Looking forward to some diveing in Lake Mendota during the winter. Had a great ice dive last year.

Doug