scubadown16
09-04-2007, 12:55 PM
Labor day weekend.... The last big summer holiday. I decided to spend some time at my favorite lake doing a little diving. I set up late Saturday night with a friend and put back a few drinks. When I got up Sunday morning I had a bit of a hang over so I decided a little food and some more beer would be the ticket to get rid of the pounding headache. I get into the water around Noon or so and dive the face of the dam. Vis was something like 4 or 5 feet and there wasn't much life. I decided it would be better to hit the dam an hour or so before sundown. This has proven to be a better time for getting some huge walleye. As I was headed back to my camp to get lunch I pulled up next to my good friends Jim and Mark Wisorich. ( Jim is the owner of Watersports Unlimited, the dive shop at the lake) They said they had been doing really well the past couple of days but the fish had for some reason moved out. Jim did manage to boat a 10 pound Walleye thou at Noon in 6 feet of water. This at least gave me hope that I would see something later when I got back in. Five o'clock rolled around and I jumped in where Jim and Mark had been earlier in the day. On my first drop I am in 12 feet of water and I am looking up hill to silo-wet some fish when two huge walleye buzzed me from the right side. I was at the end of my breath hold and had to come up so I tried to turn and make a quick shot on them but ended up spooking em out of there. I didn't see another fish that night. :mad: My friend JStroup from S/B Called at 8:30pm to say he was leaving FT. Collins and would be at my camp in several hours to dive with me on Monday. JStroup has never been to the lake so I figured it would take him longer then normal to get there but to my surprise he made good time getting to camp at 11:30pm. JStroup sleep ed in my Yukon why I headed to my tent with my friend. I set my alarm clock to get us up at 5am for first light hunting. after hitting the snooze button till 5:45 I finally got up and got JStroup up. I had to make a short swim to get my boat off the anchor and boy did that suck when its cold outside. The water was nice thou and I was awake and ready to kill some fish. We hit the spot that I had seen the big walleye the night before first and that proved to be a waist of time. So we moved to the other end of the Dam. By this time there were several other dive boats doing the same thing. After finding a space between several boats Jstroup headed one way with me going the other. I managed to land a small walleye and a bass. But missed three walleye over 5lbs a piece. I can't figure out why sometimes I hit the small ones with no problems but miss the fat broad sides of the large ones two feet from me??? After a long swim away from the boat I figure I better check on JStroup. He has never shot fresh water being from Hawaii and has never seen a walleye underwater. So I make it back to him to see that he has three walleye bigger then mine and a nice carp. We ended up shooting a couple more carp and another bass over the next couple of hours but the walleye had moved to better locations so we headed for home. The weather was awesome and the water was 75 degrees with vis being 2feet at our worst location and 5 at our best. Here is some photos of the fish.