Timeliner
Contributor
Lake Pat Mayes is located in Lamar county near the Red River about 15 miles North of Paris. At 92321 acre-feet it’s not a big lake but certainly not a pond. The water level is down right now like most area lakes about 23%. Sunday it was over cast and 53 degrees. The wind was kicking up enough to blow your dive mask off the pick nick table. The water temp is at 48 degrees and the visibility is 2 feet at the surface and about 1 foot along the bottom if you have a strong light.
Hey … it sounds like a Winter Swamp Paradise doesn’t it !!
TexDiveGuy and I had planned to dive the dam but picked a cove just to get out of the wind.
It is no doubt a Swamp Dive. But, it classified as a drift dive as well because of the wind a person could make some darned good time on the surface. :14:
We kicked out to a no wake buoy and decided to go down together on the cable and meet up at the bottom and take a 230 degree course to the other side of the lake.
We both went down and did not find each other so we came back up and found out that there were 2 different cables on the same buoy. Alan was holding the end of his buoy cable.
We went back down and made our way out and down across the bottom. I have to say I was laughing like crazy a lot of the time because I couldn’t see squat! If a person would fin along at about 1 foot over the bottom of the lake they could just make out the bottom and read a compass at the same time. If you looked back to try and see your buddy’s light and the bottom changed… well they’re you were head first… deep in the mud. It was so soft that you could plow into it and be neck deep before you realized it. It was like being a midnight under water Ostrich. ’Read your dive computer ???? Yea Right….. It was comical.
Alan and I lost track of each other for a few minutes and surfaced to find ourselves only about 4 feet apart ( Too funny) Alan pulled out his cave line and we tied off 4 feet of line between us. I could just make out a faint glow from his dive light if I really tried at that distance. Somewhere along the way both of my lights went out. I don’t remember exactly when I just knew they were out when I face planted into the bottom.
I held out my hand towards the faint and nebulus glow of Alan’s light and waved. I wear camouflage gloves so I knew he’d never see them. The light came closer and bumped into my hand. Then his hand appeared out of the dark and felt around on my hand to see what it was !! I made a thumbs up and it was like a Helen Keller story as we did this blind hand signal thing. We surfaced and decided split up and head on back solo.
Near the shore the visibility improved to about 2 feet and with a bit of natural light it was pretty good seeing at about 7 feet deep. The whole dive was funny and lasted about 50 minutes or so with a max depth of 20 feet. The laughter made the water seem quite warm actually.
We’re thinking about going back there again in the Spring and dive the dam where it’s about 56 feet deep and see if that part of the lake is as funny as the place we went Sunday.
Hey … it sounds like a Winter Swamp Paradise doesn’t it !!
TexDiveGuy and I had planned to dive the dam but picked a cove just to get out of the wind.
It is no doubt a Swamp Dive. But, it classified as a drift dive as well because of the wind a person could make some darned good time on the surface. :14:
We kicked out to a no wake buoy and decided to go down together on the cable and meet up at the bottom and take a 230 degree course to the other side of the lake.
We both went down and did not find each other so we came back up and found out that there were 2 different cables on the same buoy. Alan was holding the end of his buoy cable.
We went back down and made our way out and down across the bottom. I have to say I was laughing like crazy a lot of the time because I couldn’t see squat! If a person would fin along at about 1 foot over the bottom of the lake they could just make out the bottom and read a compass at the same time. If you looked back to try and see your buddy’s light and the bottom changed… well they’re you were head first… deep in the mud. It was so soft that you could plow into it and be neck deep before you realized it. It was like being a midnight under water Ostrich. ’Read your dive computer ???? Yea Right….. It was comical.
Alan and I lost track of each other for a few minutes and surfaced to find ourselves only about 4 feet apart ( Too funny) Alan pulled out his cave line and we tied off 4 feet of line between us. I could just make out a faint glow from his dive light if I really tried at that distance. Somewhere along the way both of my lights went out. I don’t remember exactly when I just knew they were out when I face planted into the bottom.
I held out my hand towards the faint and nebulus glow of Alan’s light and waved. I wear camouflage gloves so I knew he’d never see them. The light came closer and bumped into my hand. Then his hand appeared out of the dark and felt around on my hand to see what it was !! I made a thumbs up and it was like a Helen Keller story as we did this blind hand signal thing. We surfaced and decided split up and head on back solo.
Near the shore the visibility improved to about 2 feet and with a bit of natural light it was pretty good seeing at about 7 feet deep. The whole dive was funny and lasted about 50 minutes or so with a max depth of 20 feet. The laughter made the water seem quite warm actually.
We’re thinking about going back there again in the Spring and dive the dam where it’s about 56 feet deep and see if that part of the lake is as funny as the place we went Sunday.
