MNScuba.com

As I was driving home from a couple dives this morning at Minnetonka, I was thinking... With only 3 days to Thanksgiving, I have an awful lot of things to be thankful for. The typical things that everyone is thankful for, sure. But I sometimes forget about how the diving community in the Minnesota area is so close knit and ready to help a fellow diver. I didn't grow up with any brothers and some of the people that I have dove with have been what I imagined having a brother would be like. We got to the dive site today at 0900 hrs (the narrows channel at Minnetonka just South of Navarre) Grumpie, Hydro, and me, Tullibee came later. We were getting ready for the dive and a fisherman noticed my work truck and said he works for the scaffold company that we buy our scaffold from. I never met this guy before but he went to his car and grabbed a stocking hat for me with his companies logo on it. A few minutes later he noticed that Grumpie and Hydro were there with me, and he grabbed a hat for them too. This was unexpected and un-needed generosity, but it was appreciated as I forgot my hat at home. We did a "sea-wall search pattern" tethered with a harness under the bridge. I was about half way into the first dive and I spied a large tackle box on the bottom just beyond my reach. My Happiness gauge red-lined when I saw it and I was excited. I should have signaled two tugs for "more line" but I signaled 3 tugs stating that "I found it." I went to the surface as I was only in 14' of water and told Grumpie what I found and then went down and grabbed it. It was plumb full of tackle. When I find the download cable for my camera I will post photos of it. The rest of my first dive was un-eventful. Hydro dove next and He found a "Blackberry" style phone and a bottle. My second dive focused on the West side of the bridge. I changed direction at the end of one of the radius search paths and my foot hit the old sea-wall and my fin strap popped off and i lost a fin. I put it back on and continued the dive. I saw a 4 pound bass half alive swimming on his side on the bottom. The rest of this second dive was anti climatic. Hydro dove next and he found a lure. Tullibee snapped a few photos of us and then we went to Culvers for a cup of coffee. It was a great way to spend the morning with friends at the lake and I am looking forward to meeting more divers and spread this helpfulness around every chance I get.

Here are some photos from todays dive:
The first one is of Grumpie on the left, me in the middle, and Joe on the right.
The second one is of me on the right and Joe on the left.
The third is of the tackle box I found in the condition I found it. (note the fish eggs on the outside that look like wavy lines.)
The fourth one is the tackle box with the lid open. It has approx 200 lures in it: Mostly rubbery worms/tails/frogs, about 12 Rapalas, a bunch of musky lures, and two "Flying Lure kits". It also had two stringers, a Swiss Army Knife, a 25' tape and some boxes that I havent opened up yet. Most of the rubbery lures had this black slime on them that I hope to clean off. I spent 3 hours cleaning them and Identifying some of them. Most of the hooks need replacing as the rust had taken its toll.

Here is a short video that Hydro shot at the Narrows yesterday:
I havent watched it myself as my slow dial-up connection takes weeks to download videos and my work computer wont let me get to the youtube site.

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