this past weekend I gave a different lake a go.. don't even remember the name of it.. just a few miles west of Bemidji, and next to a town called Winton or something like that.. anyway.. thermo at 16', dark at 20', very dark at 24', and could barely make out my drop line at 36'.
Just coudn't bring myself to go deeper. just lettin' you know that I'm still out there... even if my posts have been few and far between.
Fred
I had a similar dive last night.
We were diving in Lake Mendota, which had 35' vis back in May, but is now pretty green. When floating on the surface I couldn't see the fingers on the end of my arm! :-[ We were anchored over some ledges, so that I actually could see something on the bottom if I was in the rocks, but not much as I moved into the muddy areas. At 25' I had about 6', of very dark, vis. I moved down to aobut 35' and it was so dark I couldn't make out anything at all.
I ended up putting a small weight on the end of my 25' float line to mark where I was going to dive. I would decend along the line with my eyes closed and open them up once I reached the bottom- this made decending into that mess a lot easier! Once on the bottom my eyes were adjusted to the darkness and I could start scrounging for whatever I could find- one ice breaker bar and one huge northern pike!
I also had a dive out in Lake Michigan last week that had decent vis, but rough surface conditons that made my breath-ups less than pleasent.
Now, I'm really looking forward to Wazee next weekend to actually be abe to see something!
Jon