I met Bill (PhxSki) and Josh (AzDiver23) near Vista Point on Saturday morning. What a great day for diving. VP was Diver Central with a Rescue Class going on to the left of us and divers coming and going to the right. I want to send a congrats to Laura (SeaPrincess) on her Rescue Diver certification.
Bill, Josh and I did three great dives. The visibility was awsome. We could see the sun at 115 feet! The only time I needed my dive light was to look into some crevices in the walls we dove on. We saw several good sized bass protecting their nesting sights. They're getting increasingly aggressive now which makes for some fish-nose to mask photo ops. After they decided we weren't carps or some other critter wanting to eat their eggs the bass daddys seem to relax their posture a bit.
On the first dive we descended at the dive bouy and swam east around to the wall by the boat ramp. We followed the wall to the ramp then across to the rail on the east side of the ramp. We followed the rail down to 105 feet. At some point along the way Bill found a dandy anchor. The really nice kind that folds up on one side, like the one they have on the Scubateers' boat. Since none of us need an anchor right now he left it down there for future reference. Then we worked our way back to the wall next to the ramp and harassed the bass a little more before returning to the dive bouy. Water temperature at depth was 54 degrees with no thermocline encountered. The vis was an awsome 30 - 40 feet. No dive light needed at 105 feet.
On the second dive we did a surface swim at 300 degrees for a distance of about 70 feet from the dive bouy and descended to within 40 feet of another wall. The top of the wall was at about 50 feet and the bottom was at about 75 feet. We followed the wall along to the north west and stopped when we got to 115 feet. We took a one hour surface interval between the first and second dives but it didn't take long after hitting 115 feet for our dive computers to start blinking in protest. We ascended to about 60 feet and angled back in the general direction of the dive bouy again. Vis was again awsome and there seemed to be a thermocline when we descended to the bottom of the wall but according to my VT3 it was still 55 degrees.
After another long surface interval we decided to keep the last dive to around 50 feet max. We followed the contour of the shoreline keeping at 50 feet for the trip out and ascending to about 30 feet for the swim back. The only ding on the day was from some knuckleheads fishing from a boat that was edging way to close to our dive flags. I'm told that the guts-up instructor from the rescue class "schooled" the boaters on the finer points of dive flag etiquette while we were swimming with the fishes. The boaters were gone when we surfaced.
We had a great day of diving. And to top it off, on my way home, I found out that my oldest son, Matt and his wife, Jena just finished their confined water dives and will be open water certified by the time I see them in April. They're in North Carolina so the water temps are about the same there as they are here right now.
Steve.