Viz at Travis Week of 6/13-6/18

[PvilleStang]

Mansfield, Tuesday evening

Two saltwater divers were heard at the surface giving these viz reports:
"S***, I can't see a G** D*** thing down there. I went down the line and scared the S*** out of myself when I hit my foot on the platform!" "F**ing sucks down there" Come to say, they only dive the Caribbean and were testing their new gear. Above 15 or 20 is nice, say 10 feet. Below that, roughly at 25ish there's a nice thermocline, and looks like your dropping through the clouds. 30 it opens up to a little over arms length, and from what I saw, there was a slight opening at 50 to what looked like maybe 10 foot again, but kwbyron and I weren't going off the wall, since there was a pretty rigid thermocline somewhere not too far down there that neither of us were equipped to chase. So we just practiced touch drills with the lines between boats, and also practiced holding my hand out and pretending I could see it at times. With conditions like these, how could those two saltines not want to dive fresh?!? :huh:

Will post here tonight or tomorrow with what its like tonight...

 

[PvilleStang]

So Wednesday evening at Mansfield... Viz up top still sucks majorly, ranging from 10 feet from 0-20ish (not too shabby) to touch drills from 20-50ish (maybe 3 feet at best), but slowly opens up to 10-15 feet from about 70-100. We nailed 102 on the dot today, but viz was deteriorating quite rapidly below 100. We were also on the silt flats and so we thumbed the dive at around 15 or 20 minutes, came up along the top of the wall. At this point, who's seen Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again? But yeah, we found the dork fish. One of the big ol' pink colored... carp I believe. I first caught sight of him when he nearly knocked the mask off my buddy's face. He swam right in front of him, and scared him pretty good. Then he just swam around us like the dork fish he was. Finally, I got a good look at him, from about 3 or 4 feet away. Got the light on him, and he had the face of a small, foot long fish, on roughly a 40 inch carp's body. So he swam around us for the remainder of the dive, keeping my buddy waching our 6 o'clock like we were in battle being chaced by charlie. Good times.

TO SUM IT UP:
The windex layer is on her way, currently setting up from 60-100!

 

[Cuda_72]

We dove Barstows yesterday evening. We dropped in at northern most staircase and went to 80' and swam north out of the park. Viz sucked or the most part below 60'. I would estimate ~5'. We turned the dive and came up to 50' where the viz was better at ~10'.

Nothing too terribly exciting to report although I believe we did find one of those friendly carp that Pvillestang reported. It was at the bottom of the first staircase just hanging around. We could get right up close to it and it would just meander around in the same area. On our safety stops from 20' there were a good many fish to see as we practiced a few skills to pass the time.

 

[shaggie]

DashRR and myself dove the dam wendsday afternoon. Next to the dam the vis sucked top to bottom. Couldn't take it anymore at 90ft and turned east at the wall. The vis cleared up below 60ft very nicely once out of the shadow of the dam. Above 60 was not so good. Second dive we did the cove side of mansfield. Again down deep was the vis was a good 15 ft. There is a strong thermocline at 60 ft which is where the grottos are at. We came back on our recipricle course checking poking around the wall and grottos. Nice "air" pocket in one, complete with rubber ducky and small halloween skelleton.

 

[BrianV]

So we still on for next week?

 

[PvilleStang]

So here's Thursday night's report for MANSFIELD DAM:

I ended up diving with two guys from UT, the owner of Aquasports and his wife, and a newbie. Went down the line to the platform south of the handicap ramp / stairs. The longhorns and I dropped off the edge and Mike (aquasports), his wife, and the newbie tinkered around a bit in the shallows. We went off the wall and dropped to 70ish, and kicked east for about 15 minutes, descending anytime we saw another drop off, and finally bottomed out around 100.

So here's todays Viz reports:
from the surface to around 30ish, viz cleared to 10-15 feet. from 30 to 55, viz sucked worse than the sooners against TCU last year. From that point on, it opened up to a fairly consistant 15 foot viz, and looked pretty good until we nailed the silt at 100, then viz dropped off again. Steep thermocline at 66 feet on the dot was definitely noticed. Temp at 100 was 58.

Now for the interesting story on the way home...

"I'm driving along and this little PT Cruiser is egging me on, and I've had a beer or two, and the stang's loaded with ALL my scuba gear, so there's no way in heck I'm gonna screw around. Other than a GT badge, nothing seemed too impressive with the PT, bone stock, maybe a little sportier model Chrystler puts out, I don't keep up with them. And so we pull up to a light, and I slide on in behind him, and he pulls up to a new 350z, riced out, dual fart pipes, Whale tale two stories high, rims with rubber bands for tires they were so large, and paper plates on them. The light turns green, and they both lay into each other, and the PT pulls away, THE PT!!! Take that Nissan and your 13 second showboat car!" I know a few of you like cuda and such might get a kick out of that. (posted this about 10 minutes ago on austinareastangs.com)

 

[Cuda_72]

Hey man, thanks for the update on Mansfield.

And it's always great to hear of a Mopar taking it to a ricer. Great story!