Table Rock Lake Mini Report

[Scubagal]

Lloyd and I and several others from our local dive club, GO SCUBA, spent the holiday weekend diving at Table Rock Lake near Branson, MO. Archie, our diving activities chairperson for the club, rented a houseboat at Kimberling City and arranged for airfills. We had a great group of divers. A few were diving dry with the majority diving wet. Visibility wasn't as good as we've experienced in the past, only 6-8 ft. in places.

Underwater sightings included crappie, largemouth bass, catfish, and lots of crawfish. The crawfish were fun to mess with. They would hold up their claws and try to scare you. Reminded me of the crabs in Finding Nemo, ay, ay, ay... . The island we tied up at on Friday to spend the night I named Snake Island. Early Saturday morning we watched quite a few water snakes swimming around. Glad I didn't see them on Friday when we were getting ready for our dive. On Sunday morning we had a couple of turtles hang out by the boat. I was hoping to see one while diving but no luck there.

Water temps were in the mid 60's above the thermocline. On our last dive to 59' Lloyd's computer read 52 degrees, brrr... Have to say our new 7 mil semi dry suits did pretty well keeping us warm, except for the last dive. Our group found lots of "treasure". Several fishing poles, 7-9 anchors, fishing lures, sunglasses, an adding machine (Terry found it, but Lloyd and I retrieved it), a steering wheel, and over 1,000 golf balls at one site!

All in all it was a fun weekend. Next up - a lake cleanup near Nebraska City being organized by our local dive club. Hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday weekend, diving or not.

 

[Nemrod]

Was there for a quick trip visiting friends. Dove Dewey Short, Zebulon Pike, Jake's Point Island. Max depth was around 115. Viz below the second thermocline and downward from 70 to 100 feet was decent ranging 15 to 20 feet or more, looking upward I could see perhaps 25 or 30 feet perhaps a bit more, at least the glow of the other lights.

Zebulon was severely deteriorated since last I visited. The stacks are fallen over, much debris, silt and ooze obscure areas and although we did swim down the stairway and through the bar and out the side I would recommend against further penetration. There is an awful lot of junk hanging about and some very jagged metal.

Along the deep ledges of Jake's Point we encountered the best viz but most of the other guys stayed above the second thermocline, around 60 feet, below the thermocline at 70 to 115 feet viz was good, for a freshwater lake. And like all man made fw lakes, remind me again why I am down here at 100 feet freezing my rear? Oh, yeah, somebody required me to attend as their buddy, yeah, that was it.

N

 

[moregooder]

are group dives the Kimberling city area mostly, Connie gave a good account off our trip but left one day too soon, bad whether forced use into a new cove, Largest anchor hall ever, 19 total- big cabin cruser stuff, and the finel golf ball count was 1243.
I was disipointed in the viss, have been diving that lake for 11 years, in the beging I couldn't have emagend the lake being amy cleaner, the last three haven't been so good.