Ice diving

[Shooter]

  Met at the boat landing at approximately 9:30 a.m. and had pre scouted the area from various ice fishing trips, decided to set up on the point off of cigar island.  Always a hot spot for multiple species of fish.  Took all of our gear and loaded on to a snowmobile trailer that was pulled by the four wheeler.  With the warm weather, I didn't feel comfortable driving on the lake.  There were however several full-size trucks driving around on the ice. :o.  After attempting to cut our hole, we soon realized that there was at least 6 inches more ice on Rush than there was on Goose.  The bar on my chainsaw is 18 inches, and we had to use a handsaw for the last 6 inches.  What a workout!

Seconds after dropping in the hole I realize why everybody dives on East Rush,  Instead of West Rush.  The visibility was terrible.  I had thought that with the winter,  Some of the algae would be gone and the visibility would be better ???  I was sorely mistaken.  I had a problem with my seal on my gloves.  So I aborted my dive.  Art was next, and he recovered at various ice fishing paraphernalia from the bottom.  Sorry no pictures today, as everything was really busy.

At this point it was close to noon, and I had a little treat in store for us.  I pulled out some grouper fillets, and some mangrove snapper fillets, and converted our hot water heater into a fish fryer.  Those fillets, along with some onion rings made a tasty lunch. .  It also gave us the energy to pack up everything on the trailer and head over to East Rush to get a good dive in.  I zipped in a new seal, and we are on our way.

After scouting several locations.  We picked one that looked like it had a lot of ice fishing activity on depth was only 16 feet.  I had the honor of dropping in first and was pleasantly surprised at the 15 foot visibility.  The bottom however was very silty.  You had to stay at least two to 3 feet off the bottom or the motion of your fins would stir things up.  I had a great approximate 25 minute dive stayed warm and dry and got a lot of good exercise.  Maybe a little too much ,that grouper sandwich came back to haunt me. I'm sure being  Upside down, didn't help a lot.  After that was Art 's turn.  I'll let him fill you in on the details of his dive.  It was good to get my diving fix.  Look forward to at least a couple more before ice out