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Devil's Lake Project

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
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Jon

Dairyland diver
Supporter
Apr 7, 2001
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Devil's Lake state park is the most popular park in all of Wisconsin. In the late 1800's they even built a railroad into the park to bring in toursits from Chicago. This little lake was soon built up with a half dozen resorts and steamboats running trips all around here. Over the years she statrted to build up with all of the waste that people drop into lakes. The resorts were finally taken down and it was turned into a state park. The lake itslef usually has 10' vis and is home to a nasty "swimmers itch" do to the water quality.

To the rescue comes our man Ted's boss. HE comes up with this way to suck all of the craop out of the anoxic layer in the summer time to clean the lake up. There is a pipe at the bottom that works as long as the lake is stratisfied. It has only been in place for a year and already the vis is up to 25'. When the projectis doen the lake should be returned to its orignial condition- vis of over 50'!:D

It turns out that they need pictures of the pipe intake and the scuba teams have had a problem taking a decent photo without kicking up the "fluff" on the bottom. So they call on Ted to go and get some shots of the pipe for a lecture coming up.

That means that we get to go play on his company time. We hiked into the lake yesterday, and I was sure glad that we didn't have to drag any scuba tanks with us.

Jon
 
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Once we got the right place on shore we started to hike down to the acces point. That happens to by my kid sister tagging along with us for the trip.

Once we got to the water we started swimming for the bouy that the scuba team put in to mark the pipe.

As it truns out, the bouy isn't on the pipe and I hade to do a few dives to fins the darnthing. I then procceded to TIE the bouy line to the pipe- a novel idea I know.;)

From here we could start diving to get some shots of the pipe intake holes and measure how far off the bottom they were- max depth was only 45'.
 
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The bottom of the lake has a layer of "fluff" that kicks up very easily. Vis was not the best and I was thankful to have my new wide angle lens- thanks for the tip on that one Cliff!:cool:

I was able to hold the ruler in one hand and snap away with the other. THe vis on the bottom of the lake doesn't really do it justice. The top 25', where all of the fish are, is actually very clear.
 
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After the hard part was done we wnet back to the rock rubble side of the lake and started to paly wiht the fish. I even found myself a new anchor to make the day worthwhile. Here is my latest attempt at a panoramic underwater shot.
 
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Devil's Lake was alwasy a really nice place to spearfish becasue the water was nicer than some of the other lakes around here. The fish always seemed to taste a bit better out of this lake. All of that hanged this past winter. The local DNR has decided to plant trout in there which now makes the whole lake off limits for any kind of spearfishing- per Wisconsin law. That's too bad as the lake is full of tatsy meals.

Jon
 
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Here's a shot that I took of the lake above water earlier this year. There are huge bluffs that people from a couple of states around come to climb on.
 
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Devils Lake Project

Jon,
Great story and major props to you for your participation in a worthy endeavor! ...Tried to give you karma, but apparently I can't at this time....sorry!
 
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