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Cass Ice Part One

Royal

Well-known member
Nim's story reminded me of something I got myself into a few years back. Actually more than a few since I was still with my first wife! Geeesh, it had to be 20 years ago or more.

It was late November, not unlike right now, and I was setting around the house, bored to death. I had not been diving for a while and was getting the urge. The fact that it was colder than heck and the sky was ashen grey didn't discourage me much. I have always been a bit on the impulsive side.

There is a park on Cass Lake. I invited Nim and Darrell to a little hunt there this last February. I have dove in Cass, off the park, many times with great results. I especially liked bottle hunting in the lake and have hundreds of finds to show for the effort.

I looked out of my window at the sky and it looked a bit crappy but what the hell? I called one of my bottle hunting, dive buddies and asked him if he felt like a dive. I had to listen to ten minutes of him insulting my intelligence and such but finally wore him down. I simply asked him if he was gonna be a sissy all his life. I told him I was going alone if he didn't come along and he relented. I told him, Dwaine was his name, to meet me at the park and we would go from there.

This was before I bought my hookah so we would be using tanks. We normally do single tank dives, which means it would be about a one-hour dive. That would be plenty under the conditions.

When I got to the parking lot at the lake, Dwaine was waiting. He was standing outside the car and a looking at the sky. Man it did look like crap and the wind was picking up out of the north. He said it looked like snow to him and I told him not to be stupid. It was only November! I guess I should have given that statement a bit more thought and he should have brought it to my attention that it does snow in November in Michigan :)

Cass Lake is the biggest lake in Oakland county and is about 1500 acres or so. It is deep. There are 5 holes over a hundred feet with the deepest 127ft. There are also 4 other holes over 90 ft. It is shaped like a big arsed kidney with Dodge Park at the inside of the bend. The deepest spot is straight out from the park beach. If we stayed to the left of the hole, we could hunt a huge area that was not over 15 ft or so. I have found many old bottles in the area over the years. Fishermen had been pitching bottles there for a hundred years. The shallow plane goes all the way across the lake with hundred foot holes on either side. The flat between the holes was about, and I am guessing here, 500 yards. Lots of room.

Dwaine and I suited up, all the time him a bitchin' about the fact that we just might freeze our arses off. I just ignored the guy as why would I give any credit to a persons opinion that was so damn weak that he would let me talk him into this stunt in the first place? Doesn't figure... I took a side look at the sky and did notice it was looking bad. Those damn ole' grey clouds were just a scuttling across the sky and a fearful rate. Oh well. I came to dive and dive I would! I noticed the whitecaps were building on the lake but they since we were on the north side they were hitting the far shore. No problem! :0)


When we are diving we always drag a inner-tube along behind us, on a hundred foot rope. This tube has a plastic laundry basket laced in the center with rope to hold any goodies we might happen to find and also there was a dive flag mounted on it to warn any boats. Like there would be any boats out today. It would help to find our bodies too if it came to that. :)

Dwaine was a bitching type that day, I'll tell you! We donned our suits and slung on the tank. Down to the waters edge we headed. I was a lugging the tube and flag. Now I don't know why the boy was a griping cuz we were wearing dry suits. They are pretty darned warm actually. You are sealed from the water and actually wear heavy long johns under them. Your hands and face get wet but with a hood and wet suit gloves, it is bearable. Damn that wind was a picking up now. Just a howling!

We waded out deeper, our masks and fins in the basket until we were waste deep. Man that damn water was getting rough! It was hard to keep my balance while pulling on the fin, even though I was holding onto the tube for support! That is ok, I figured, because we would soon be on the bottom and out of the weather. When we were ready, I started letting out the tube line to its full 100ft and we walked backwards toward the deep water. When we got chest deep we nodded to each other and dropped down to the bottom.

Once on the bottom everything is calm. It is amazing but you are in a different world. All you hear is the sound of your breathing and a little pulsing from the movement of the waves, which seemed to be building, on the rope I held in my right hand. It can be very peaceful and I sure was glad I had come out now.

We swam to the right toward the deep hole, not wanting to go down in it but to use it for reference. Many people fished around the hole over the years and many bottles were tossed overboard. I have a good collection of old blob topped beer bottles I have found along with an assortment of old fishing lures.

I was sorta leading the procession as I had the tube. We did not follow each other tightly but tried to keep aware as to the others position. I don't worry about needing help but it is a big lake out there. The visibility was not the best as the sun was up there, but it was above about 5000 ft of nasty assed clouds. It was getting darker but at that point I was not noticing it much. I was hunting bottles and we were finding some. I will not pretend I can remember what the hell they were but I was enjoying myself, snug as a bug.

It seemed to be getting darker all the time but I sorta ignored it. I could feel the tube tugging against me and it was a bit irritation as it wanted me to head south and I was on a sorta southwest heading. We were in 15 or 20 ft of water, no more than that anyway, and I sorta let the wind have its way with me and went more south than west. I really didn’t have much of a choice as it was dragging me a bit. I had never had it happen before. It felt like I was hung up on something, like weeds and I kept a tugging on the rope, at first unconsciously but it started to piss me off and I looked up toward the surface to see if I could see something.

I finally thought it was time to get a bearing on our position and see what the heck I was hung up on. I looked at Dwaine and nodded up toward the surface and he nodded OK.
 
Looking forward to reading part 2 my friend

Fair winds

Micheal
 
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