East of Vista Point [also known as sunrise Cove]
The spring canyon area would be optimal for an OW student as that cove has at least 200′ of length between 10 – 25′ in depth before it drops off. This is not good for AOW if you going to do a deep dive because you burn lots of air just swimming to and from the length of this channel. However, with all the boats putting in there, unless you could get all your training dives done by 10:00 a.m. (or maybe even earlier) I would not risk it.
-We found a deep trench that was a lot farther out than I remember now that the lake level has come up. At the end of our second dive we were coming up from the trench again. The “banks” of the trench are at about 30 feet. We were swimming about half way up the side of the trench looking up into the sunlight. We saw a huge shadow swim across our path along the top of the trench. Then it swam back. Further on we got close enough to see the size of the fish. It was huge. I think it was a bass but I don’t know my fish that well. It seemed to be guarding it’s nesting area. When we were almost to the top of the trench wall we saw 4 or 5 smaller fish trying to get past the big guy. There must have been a ladyfish thereabouts We hovered for a while watching the whole thing play out. The little guys finally gave up and swam further along the top of the trench to a rock wall where they joined a few more unlucky bachelors.
We ended up moving around closer to the real Vista Point area for our third dive. There were just to many boats at the landing. They were either launching or coming back in. Dive flag violation seemed to be the sport of the afternoon.
Steve – ScubaSteve2000
