Dive 220 - Alone In Lake Vernon

I had brought my dive gear up to my folk's cottage on the shores of Lake Vernon and I was determined to get a dive in. I had brought my 2 mil wetsuit and single tank setup along. So, with an aluminum 80, a single regulator with a two first stages attached and only a backup light with me as I was without a canister light I headed into the water towing a dive flag as I went.

The light zone extended down to 13 feet. After hitting 13 feet the lake bottom continued to descend but it turned pretty much pitch black and I could just make out a huge tree trunk in front of me.

As I had no can light and no dive buddy, discretion was the better part of valor and I kept out of the pitch dark as there wasn't much worth seeing anyways, considering I couldn't see it even if it was there. Next time I'll bring a can light and a dive buddy.

So I headed into the light zone and wandered around the shallower parts of the lake bottom, and I found a few cans that people had thrown into the lake, which I retrieved and brought back to the dock for disposal.

I also found one pretty decently sized fish that was wandering about:

I then surfaced and gave the kids some submerged rides with them sitting on top of my tank out of the water over to the neighbor's trampoline and they enjoyed that experience.

Then my dad came to the dock and told me about a rock pile that remained from an old large dock that was under a marker buoy and I decided to go check it out.

There were indeed lots of rocks down there:

There was also some large pieces of lumber from the old dock pilings

There was also a crappie load of blue gills making their home among those rocks:

The blue gills were rather interested in what I was doing interloping in their domain and they had no trouble coming right up close to me. it was fun to just sit neutrally buoyant just floating a few inches off the bottom and watch them swim around me.

So while it wasn't the most exciting or challenging dive, it was a rather relaxing one. A long and shallow dive, with the average water temp of 77 degrees and 1500 of the 3000 psi used in the tank by the end.

On the upside, I finally have dove at least a very tiny piece of Lake Vernon and was probably the first diver to visit that portion of the lake.

Then this morning we packed up our stuff, loaded the car and drove home and I'm now back home to reality, and a decent internet connection.