More Fun In Cold Water!

[cdavis]

Fondueset,

No question body language affects the fish and, when I work at it, I have reasonable success suppressing whatever it is that spooks them. I think the speculation about expert spearo's doing the same thing is right on target.

The camera thing fascinates me. That it looks like an eye sounds reasonable, but it could also be body language. Could you test it by somehow dressing the camera up to make the lense less prominent? disguise it?

Connor

[Fondueset]

Personal Best for inclement weather - and also a first for changing locations due to potential social impact.

About 19F today - heavy snow. I was optimistic but when I reached the bay there was a howling wind out of the north causing white-outs and three-foot waves near shore.

Several inches of Ice on everything near the water got me thinking about my float icing up, but none of it was a show stopper where I come from.
Hell, the wind was blowing TOWARD shore - what's the big deal? If I got tired I could just relax and get washed in. Problem was it looked crazy. I could picture some doofi calling the cops on me just for being out there.

Fine. So I went over to an alternate location on the west side of the bay. This spot has a small wreck and is protected in the north by a large marina breakwall. As expected the wind was mostly whistling by about 1/3 mile out. Also as expected, the visibility was a relatively crappy 25-30 feet with lots of suspended particles.
I checked out the wreck and investigated some interesting contours on the bottom. On the way in I found a large carp ostensibly sleeping in the weeds near shore. When I got out my omer weight vest immediately froze solid and ice formed on my mask. Since the windchill was sub-zero F it seems clear that dives in the teens on a still day are reasonable. One less reason not to dive!

[ocean_314]

I wish i could hunt carp in california, but no freshwater spearfishing is legal. And i have a lake 5 minutes form my house full fo carp.

[Fondueset]

We can hunt them here but I'm not down with spearing anything I can't eat - and carp are very long-lived - probably accumilating all sorts of insidious crap.

Also they Love me.

This is from an interesting encounter I had last weekend - there were several hundred big carp. I was working on my new monofin so the camera work is shoddy.

Carp Kiss

(truth be told I think it was more of a "F%#* off!!"

[ocean_314]

I agree with you about not killing anything that i will not eat. I have some chinese friends that just love them. I fish for them in the spring until they dont want anymore. We have a small lake that is full of carp to the point where they are impacting the populations of some of the sunfish like the redear which i love to eat.

[Fondueset]

Jon has the same problem over in Wisconsin - a different breed of carp but they are dominating some inland lakes. In Lake Michigan they don't seem to be much of a problem.

[Pinggene]

Fondueset,

Where did you encounter all the carp? Was that Lake Michigan? If yes, any specific structure? Were you by a warm water discharge? Why do you think there were so many?

Gene

[fleedermouse]

Fondueset is lucky enough to live on Grand Traverse Bay where there is a good amount of structure. At least compared to me down here in Grand Haven. All I have is sand.

[Fondueset]

Those carp were in a spot I seldom dive at. It's on the west side of the bay where there are quite a few springs and a large harbor. The visibility is generally half or less of my usual spot. Seem to be more nutrients in the water as there are sizeable weed beds. The carp were in about 30 feet of water near the mouth of the marina - I'm not sure why and it's the most carp I've ever been in the water with.

[Fondueset]

Beauty dive yesterday. I planned to visit an alternate location on the west side of the bay. Not my fav but I'd seen a swarm of several hundred carp there two weeks (see above) ago and wanted to get some pictures using my ice fins instead of my mono, with which I need some work for smooth photography.
Winds were very strong out of the west and I figured this would move all the ice out.

As I was driving toward the bay I could see plenty of open water so I stopped at my usual spot - which only had about 150 meters of ice. I walked out about a hundred meters. The ice was covered with 20-40cm of snow over slush over ice with variable thickness. The only approach here would be to gear up and walk out until I either reached the edge or fell in. Not wanting a hefty bill from the coast guard (even if I refused to ride in the rescue helo) when some hysteric saw me fall through the ice and called them, I opted for plan A.

No ice at the secondary spot, but plenty of snow. Got stuck on the way in and had to cut open a sand bag, manually rock the truck to make some tracks (pure ice under 40cm of snow), then back in and out a few times to make sure I could get out. Nicely warmed up I finally got in the water.

Visibility in this spot is usually nowhere near as good as the south end, but today was different. There was haze near the bottom close to shore, probably from the many springs that feed into the bay here, but the rest was very clear.

I immediately encountered a pair of Gizzard Shad in about 5 or 6 meters of water. They were not averse to my company and, despite being too bouyant at that depth - which badly jammed my stealth, I managed some decent shots of them.

Further out the visibility slipped into the amazing zone. The bottom contours are awesome in this area. Steep dune-like dropoffs of light sand resting at the angle of repose down into flat fields of zebra muscles. River-like valleys separating them. The sun came out and illuminated pods of carp casting shadows on the bright bottom as they swam languidly above the sand, or held station at mid-depth; checking me out..

I'm seeing a LOT more fish than this time of year last year. Partly I am diving more and deeper - but I wonder if the bay is warmer.

Shot a little bit of video too.

Clear Day

[khel]

As usual - great pictures and videos!

Judging by the video, you were diving in bi-fins, am I right?

[Fondueset]

Yep - used my ice fins. Following those shad in a mono would've been really tricky! I had to keep moving to stay down with them - even on half a breath. I'm sure if I'd been able to do aspetto I could have gotten some nice face-on shots. First time I've seen shad be curious.

I need much more practice with the mono - but it does seem the bi-fins are more conducive to minimizing perceived movement.

[Jon]

You got that right!

I get sea sick watching some of my video clips that I filmed with my monofin on- going up and down as I swim.


Jon

[Fondueset]

Good to know it's not just me. Maybe I can get a perfect counter motion going with my arms that cancels out the wave

[nostres]

Yeah, monofin does not help in this case but it's "almost OK" on the way down. If during descend one will just push the housing down using fingers (not holding it with the hands) then footage should be preetty steady. I know it works well with big & heavy video housings but little camera may be a problem.