Winter spearfishing

[FreediveWI]

With the great weather we had yesterday we just had to get out and enjoy it. Air was in the 40's and the vis was over 20'!

We didn't get a lot of crappie, our usual target, but we had a great time. I did mange to get this buffolo, similar to a carp, and one of the ladies who plays on the Madison Underwater hockey team has a smoker to cook them up in.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

Of course, half the fun of diving the 'outlet' in Lake Monona is to watch all of the other fish which we can't spear- so we take picutres of them instead. ;D There were lots of really fat bass and some big musky simming around in there.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

The biggest musky, over 4', took off before I could get my camera, but this guy hung around for quite a while.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

There were plenty of smaller panfish hanging out in the entrence to the outlet, but you really needed to hunt to find the bigger ones.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

There's always a current running out of the pipe, so you don't worry about getting sucked into it.

If you swam up into it yesterday, like we did many itmes, you found 60 degree water. As you swam away from it the water dropped down to 34, by the ice. These temps change all the time. the last time I was out I could only find 45 degree water inside the pipe. We would cycle back and forth between the two and only got out because we ran out of memeory in the camera, otherwise we could have stayed in for many more hours before the cold got to us. 8)

If you swim up the pipe about 20-30' it opens up into another outflow and you can swim the loop. We did this a few times to scare out the fish that were hiding in there. I ended up with some neat video of it, but all of my photos just turned out balck becasue of how dark it is in there. Still, it's a blast to swim in through the darkness and flush out a bunch of carp and musky through the other end.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

We moved out to deeper water, around 35', and got into the school of big buffolo and carp. Out here the water was colder, but also much clearer. My buddy, Ted, was not to be out-done and got a nice fish as well.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

There is a floating wall that they bouy off of the outlet. The last time I was there it was frozen solid in the ice, but yesterday it was wide open on both sides. If you look in the distance you can see the Monona Terrace Convention Center. This floating wall made for a good place to climb up on and warm up a little bit.

Jon

[dfreeman]

Jon,

Some great pictures. Gives a good idea on what warmer temperatures will do to attract fish. Fishermen always start their fishing season on the Wisconsin River at our outfall because of all of the fish it attracts being slightly warmer water.

Need to dive these warm water conditions in the future.

Doug

[FreediveWI]

This picture isn't quite as sharp, but that's becasue I was in video mode at the time. I pulled this off the video. It shows what it's like when you come out the pipe- pushing all of the fish out in front of you. 8)


Jon

[FreediveWI]

One more shot on the way out.

Jon