Rum River Dive Yesterday

[DetectorGuy]

I had a good time diving with Shooter yesterday in the Rum River by Cambridge. Last year the old bridge was removed and a new one was built in its same location. To build the piers for the bridge they had built temporary coffer dams that funneled the water through the center. In the past this area under the bridge and down stream had been gravel and rocky. This rocky area trapped a lot of things over the years. The coffer dams must have funneled the sand from upstream and covered all the gravel. It was just a sandy moon scape for the most part. The good news is that the construction workers did a great job making sure the bottom of the river was left cleaner than when they started, and there was no trace of the coffer dams. The bad news is that all the sand from upstream flushed through the narrow gap of the coffer dams and settled from the bridge to about 200 yards down stream filling a 26' deep hole with sand. This hole was originally created by a mill dam (which is still partially there). The hole is now only 16' deep. I know rivers change and maybe all this re-distributed sand has uncovered something else upstream. The water seemed colder than the 63 degrees shown on my computer and the viz was about 3'. I saw some nice bass around the submerged trees and luckily I did not see any snapping turtles. I found a couple bikes, an aluminum Razor scooter (which I gave to a few kids fishing under the bridge), a shopping cart and the usual river debris.