Help, I'm Withering!!

[bsnyder]

Ok, maybe a little melodromatic, but I am now stuck living 2000 miles away from the ocean and I am drying up and withering :-(. Now that I am done with grad school I had to go back to work for the company that paid for it all and live in Michigan. I have not been able to find out about any inland freediving places of interest (like quarries, lakes with interesting fish/plant life, ship wrecks in water warmer than 45deg!, etc).

So, any freedivers out there that know of any places to go around michigan? Including moderate drives like ontario, ohio, illinois, etc. I would be forever in your debt.

Thanks,
Bryan

 

[Jon]

Welcome back to the midwest Bryan!

I am over in Wisconsin. I was last freediving in February under the ice. I followed the advice of some of the other divers on here and it was actually a lot of fun.

This past weekend I was up at a lake called Wazee. I was trimix diving, but the lake would have been great for freediving. We had trout swimming around us at the 20' stop. The water was 39 degrees at depth and close to 45 at about 15'.

I was out wreck diving in lake Michigan two weekends ago. The water was 36 degrees from top to bottom, but the vis was great!

When the water warms up a little bit, in about a month, I will start freediving a lot more on the wrecks out in Michigan.

There are a lot of clean inland lakes to dive in, but the Great Lakes are the most fun. You can see trout, salmon, schools of bait fish or bottom feeding fish like burbot.

The visibility has gone way up in the past 10 years because of the zebra mussles. Places that never had more than 10' of vis in the 80's have over 50' now. I even had 80' on one dive back in January.

In August you should watch the weather patterns. There are times when the warm weater builds up and gives you 70 degree temperatures down to 90' or 100'. That is the best time of year to freedive.

What part of Michigan are you in?

Jon