More Fun In Cold Water!

[Fondueset]

I noticed that when I was a kid - I did a lot of spearfishing around here. Back then I worked on it a little and while it sounds weird I was able to tweak my intention. It's sort of a black art but pretty much gun or camera it doesn't make any diff.

In fact the fish seem more wary of the camera most of the time and I have to be really careful how I move it. Extending a gun toward them doesn't seem to cause as much of a reaction as just bringing up the lense, very slowly even. Of course there is not a great deal of spearing here but some of the fish are very twitchy nonetheless.
I've had fish spook repeatedly just from gently rotating the camera so the lense points at them. They must think it's a big scarey eye or something.

I haven't done scuba in years but from my conversations with local divers I don't think they see near as much fish-wise - though they probably have more encounters with fish that remain stationary and hide under things - like burbot.

 

[fleedermouse]

I live about 150 miles to the south of Fondue right on the windward side of Lake Michigan.

Fondue,

I haven't had much luck down here in Grand Haven yet. I saw a few drum back in August and I find scattered alewive schools at times but, alas, no bait balls. It seems that my best option for finding fish is along the piers. My problem with that is that there is almost always a horde of fishers lining any given pier. When they are not there, I'm distracted/concerned about the myriad of lines that may ensnare me in these areas. Any tips for me?

I might go out soon just off the beach to see if any salmonids are cruising betwixt the sandbars. I have heard that they tend to collect in these areas, especially when the water is colder.

Bret

 

[Jon]

Bret,

I can understand you lack of success off of Grand Haven.

I did a slavage job over there a few years back and that is one FLAt, SANDY place! I spent a few hours on the bottom running search patterns and was happy anytime I even bumped into a rock- it was a friggin' desert!

Of course it did make it easier to find what we were looking for since it stuck up off the sand, but I don't think I ever saw a single fish in the 5 hours I spent on the bottom that day.

If you come over the the west side of the lake, or go further north, the bottom changes quite a bit. On my side of the lake we have these huge clay mounds that take the shape of coral reefs in spots. They come up off the bottom 10-15' and there's plenty of room to hide things inbetween- which makes it harder to side scan for some old wreck that could easily be lying inbetween them!

We also have huge boulders on the bottom, some as big as a fishing tug, that were brought down when the lake formed. They are pretty impressive in size and allow for more areas for the fish to hide. Of course, this also makes it hard to side scan for new wrecks and i can't tell you how many house sized boulders i've dove on over the years when in search for a new wreck that we thought was in the area.:head

Your area seems to be much better for surfing than mine. Maybe you'd have better luck hitting some inland lakes?

Jon

 

[Fondueset]

Sounds like it's pretty sandy down there. I also see Drum mainly in august. They cruise the open areas here in the bay and out in the big lack. Out there I found the easiest way to get close to them was to go down and wait. If you can find a dropoff or something - even some rocks for the gobies to hide in - that's where the fish are. Here Lake Michigan has rock fields and marl (clay) beds - though I've not seen any as interesting as what Jon describes - so there are plenty of gobies and zebra muscles for the drum. Still I've yet to find a place in open Lake Michigan that is as interesting as the area I usually dive at the south end of West Grand Traverse Bay. If you can get up here in early spring let me know. I can keep you posted on what's happening - or you could catch the ferry over to Jon's domain. Even right now I'm having a blast stalking walleye.

 

[fleedermouse]

Wow,

You 2 have no idea what a relief it is to hear this kind of validation of what I have (not) been able to find. I thought maybe I was just some kind of a nimrod and couldn't find the fish. rofl Looks like I will have to head up north and west once in a while. I can't even touch 20 meters yet but now that I am settling into my new environs, I will have to get up there to Grand Traverse Bay for some trips. I can get there in <3 hours so it's an easy overnighter/extended daytrip for me. As for the west side of the lake, I'll make it over there when the ferry starts running again. My wife goes to Green Bay once a month for school so I may as well tag along on my weekends off.

Thanks again guys for the info.

Bret

 

[Fondueset]

Let me know and I can tell you the easiest access spots to see stuff - all 12meters or less depth - but the dropoff is handy if you want to go a little deeper. Bring a flag and float for sure!

 

[Jon]

Bret,

If your going to Green Bay then you need to just go a little bit north into Door COunty. There are a ton of shallow wrecks, rocks, small sea caves and other places to dive.

In your area there are one or two shipwrecks, but I think that they re all around 50' deep.


Jon

 

[fleedermouse]

Fondue-

Got your PM. Sounds like very doable conditions for my current ability. I'll have to head up there the next time the weather looks good and I have some time off.

Jon-

Looks like I need to train to be able to hit those then. Someone told me there is one just north of the N. pier @ Muskegon. That's only a 20 min. drive for me. and it doesn't look like it gets too much boat traffic even in summer.

 

[wet]

Did somebody say Cold Water? Brrr!

For me that's ice fishing weather back in Minnesota...

I came across these stories in Science Week:

Dating a massive undersea slide
Pieces of 8,000 year old moss buried in debris left along the Norwegian coast by an ancient tsunami have enabled geologists to better determine the date
of the immense underwater landslide that triggered the inundation.

Glaciers give major boost to sea level
The ongoing disappearance of glaciers and other small ice masses
worldwide makes a larger contribution to sea level rise than the
melting of ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica does.

Scraping the bottom
A survey of deep waters in western Lake Superior has revealed the
tracks left by massive icebergs scraping bottom there during the last
ice age.

Has anyone found any ancient iceberg scrapings on the lake bottoms? Maybe a mastodonsickle or submerged mammothberg? How about arrowheads?

DDeden

 

[Jon]

My father-in-law came across the reminants of an underwater forest out in LAke Michigan and took some wood intot he university to get carbon dated. It came back dated about 10,000 years old.

As far as wrecks go, I am seeing a few just north of Muskegon.

SALVOR: 30' deep, N43 15.49 W86 22.19

HENRY CORT: 50' deep, along north breakwall in Muskegon

MANISTEE: 25' deep, N43 04.75 W86 12.17

Right off of Grand Haven I only see the wreck of the Ironside (110'-125')

Just to the south, of of Holland, there are a few more:

27' sailboat: 22' deep N42 55.73 W86 14.84

Crane and Barge: 45'-55' deep, N42 42.71 W86 13.92

VERANO: 50' deep, N42 30.21 W86 15.96

Now, it seems that there are two other areas further south from you that may be of interest. They are not wrecks but some of th clay mound formations that we get over on this side of the lake.

The first one is called the SOUTH HAVEN CLAY BANK. They are in 50'-60' of water but come up off the bottom over 15'! They are part of a mulit acre anchient beach zone.

The second one is shallower, only 25'-40' deep, and is made up of a combination of clay banks and concrete structures that were dumped there inbetween the clay mounds. It sounds like it would be a haven for fish. The numbers for it are: N42 25.484 W86 16.999. It's called DONNY'S REEF.

Jon

 

[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