Anyone dive the pits yet? I noticed Mille Lacs went ice free at the end of last week according to the DNR site so the pits should be ice free now. I'm guessing the the pits on the Iron Range (Ore Be Gone, Lake Mine, St. James) still have some ice since they are further north.
I drove past Portsmouth this weekend - it was open... unfortunately, I can't give you first-hand dive conditions -- but I wish I had managed to sneak in a dive! ;D
hard to say, I was by cass lake, lake bemidji, and leech lake yesterday.. they all had ice but it was going to be gone soon. It was a long way from shore, and looked like one good day of wind with some decent temps would clear them. A lot of ice had already piled up on the shores apparently from a previous strong north wind.
crazy, but I drove through rain, sleet, hail, and heavy snow last night. We had pretty good snow fall here last night so I was glad to see that none of it lasted through the night.
Ozzie and I dove Louise yesterday. Vis was a little lower than usual, with about 15 ft of vis down to about 100 ft. At 110 ft the vis dropped to about 2 ft. Made it hard to see the deep boat just right of the main entrance.
Water temperature was 41 at depth. There was a nice thermocline at about 30 ft where the temperature rose up to 42.
We decided with the colder weather, and some rain that one dive would be enough. We were down for over 90 min, and were really glad to get out of the water.
Can't wait for that nice 80 degree surface temperatures
Jeff
Hopkins, Diamond Cove vis is fair. Very dark at 65feet. Thermo was maybe 12feet.
Mangan, Sleepy Hollow vis is good. Maybe 15-18 feet. Shallows are clear maybe 20+
Joan, Truck, vis is poor to 44feet.
All 40 degrees.
Mangan: 5 Bass seen in the grass at 14ft and 8 Carp in rocks about 8 feet.
sounds like you had a good weekend! I finally managed to actually get a short dive in yesterday!!! I don't want to even look to see when the last dive was before that. viz pretty much sucked, and I was only out for about 20 minutes, but it was still nice to get back in the water. found a couple ropes with still good trigger snaps out around where the diving raft sits, so it turned out to be a treasure dive! had one "interesting occurance -- was just swimming slowly along, about a foot or so off the bottom since I could only see slightly better than an arm length. just cruising along, and all I'm seeing is weeds, when all of a sudden from lust just below my belly button - either a dogfish or a sucker came FLYING out of the bottom and rocketed past my face! startled the crap out of me for sure! I didn't get a good look at it, but I did notice that it was brown so it wasn't a northern. it took off so fast that I didn't get a good look at the tail/fins (and I was slightly distracted by making sure my heart was still beating!). 22 mins, 14' max, 45F (seemed colder than that...)
edited to fix typo, but left the remnants for humor value! :o
It was a great day to dive. Even the wood ticks came out to enjoy the day, eh arcflash? Mangan was definitely the best location of the three. Three new dive sites for me, though. Thanks.
Went up with a group from the Minnesota School of Diving and it was cold but fun last week. We dove the pit they called CT two bit. It had vis of about 15 feet but we dove in the evening so sunlight was a issue. Just checking on the weather to see if it is a go this week.