Presque Isle

I just got back from a week up on Presque Isle lake in Northern Wisconsin- we were less than 3 miles from the Michigan border.

We stayed right on the lake and I dove there quite a bit. Throughout the week we too some day trips up to the Porcupine mountains and checked out Lake Superior. We also got some biking/diving in over at Trout Lake, which is just south of Boulder Junction.

Presque Isle Lake is very nice- I found it by searching Lakesat.org for the best vis lakes I could find. Once I found my lake I started my search for a cabin to rent. this is becoming harder to do every year as many of the old resorts have been sold out and turned into condos or vacation homes for the out of state crowd.:rcard Eventually, we found this nice little place, but the owners are looking to sell and who knows what land developer will buy the place- we certainly can't afford the $2.7 Million price tag that comes with it. rofl

The lake drops down to 103' in the center, although its down a few feet with the drought they have up there. I never got a chance to get past 30-' because the lake drops quickly around the sides and then goes out into some long flat planes before hitting any depth in the very center. I found the most interesting stuff in the 10'-20' section, with the 20'-30' spots being fairly devoid of anything interesting. Most of the lake is sand and rock with less than 7% of the total bottom composed of muck/silt. I bet this place has over 50' of vis in the spring. We had 70F degree water down past 30' and I was very warm in my 3mm.

There's two public boat ramps on this lake and the rest is all private property with some pretty fancy homes interspersed though out the woods. I rented a boat so I could drag my scooter around with me- which i just updated with anew climbing harness to make my diving even more effortless.:inlove I also had a chance to play around with my new ICE fins- my new favorite fins. Throughout the week we managed to get some kayaking and canoing in as well- since my kids love to kayak and hate motor boats.rofl I did find out that my daughter fits perfectly into the front hatch of my Scupper Pro. I simply take the hatch cover off and she's got her own, dry, cockpit to sit in.

Here's a few shots from the week.

Jon

No dive trip would be complete without finding some treasure. On this trip I managed to fill my quota of anchors and musky lures- which I donated to the local resort since they gave me a good deal on the boat rental. They were happy to have the gear and I had no extra room for anchors- or need for fishing lures of any sort.

The one thing I found that I did decide to keep was a speargun lying on the bottom- which happens to be very illegal in this lake!:rcard It's not only illegal to spearfish in this lake, but it's illegal to spearfish anywhere in the county- or the surrounding counties! I was almost worried about putting it into my boat for fear of some game warden thinking it was mine and throwing me in the slammer. After looking at the layer of algae on it I decided that I was safe from that. It still works and I just need to scrub it up a bit and put a new rubber on it. It will be the perfect size for my daughter to use in a couple of years.

The lake is also home to a commercial cray fishery. There is somewhat of a problem from invasive spices of crayfish throughout the northern half of the state so they have these commercial traps laid out all over the place- and they are stuffed to the brim.

Jon

This is a bug musky lake, but they must be sitting pretty deep about now. I did see a couple of smaller ones, but nothing as big as the ones we see around here in the spring and winter time. There are also some very large schools of walleye cruising around at about 10'-15'. There were lots of really big small mouth bass cruising around the place- I was actually following a bass with my video camera when he led me to the speargun. For all of the nice sized small mouth bass I saw I didn't see a single largemouth bass- maybe Ted knows why?

Jon