# My Clay spot



## blobbottlebob

I am about to post a long story about diving for bottles. Fair warning if you've never seen my stories. They are long and rambling and wander off into seeing fish and the like. I will include some drawings and pictures. Also, this is going to take me awhile to get everything loaded up.
Another little warning, rarely do I see the bottles that I find. So, I will often guess what a bottle is before I see it. Then I compare what I thought it was to what it actually is. It is one of the things I enjoy most. 
So, here I go ....


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## blobbottlebob

In October of 2014, my scuba buddy Tom and I decided to dive one more time before hanging up our gear for the season. We typically dive two tanks on a trip. On our previous outing, I found no bottles. In fact, I touched no glass at all. Not a Corona or a Budweiser that some idiot tossed in a week earlier. Zip. Zero. Nada. Nothing.


So, I was looking forward to better luck. On our first tank we chose to go in a weedy area. I did not put my hands on any glass again. This was now officially a slump. I did, however, see a medium sized largemouth bass. Since I wasn't finding anything, I decided to mess with him. He seemed to be holding his ground and watching me. I tried to see how close I could come to touching him before he swam off. As my hand approached, he didn't back away. I got closer and closer until I was an inch from touching his nose. He wasn't backing down. I decided that it wasn't doing the fish any good if I touched it, so I respectfully pulled my arm back and swam a wide arc around him. He was having none of it. As I was leaving, he closed in on my leg and tapped my thigh. It didn’t hurt it was just a little bump. I thought that was pretty funny. He showed me who was touching who.


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## blobbottlebob




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## blobbottlebob

So, after my third consecutive skunked tank, we met back at the boat to discuss our last dive. Tom wanted a nearby shoreline that we dove dozens and dozens of times. I thought that it was too picked over and I didn’t much want to go there. I suggested another section of shoreline where we had found a lot of bottles. Tom didn’t much like that idea. Then, almost simultaneously, we thought of a tiny sliver of a section we hadn’t worked much. It was worth a try. We moved over, anchored the boat, geared up, and sank down. As I descended into a soft muddy bottom, I bumped something hard. I reached down to find a little green crown (like a 7 UP). It was nothing good, nothing that I wanted, but at least I had a feeling that my luck was about to change. I was touching glass again.
As I started off away from the boat, I saw a musky swimming towards me. He was thin, maybe twenty four to thirty inches long shaped like a missile and a little bleached from the scant light at the bottom. When I see a musky, I almost always stop to watch them because they are beautiful and graceful and I rarely see them. Before long, I was back to searching. A short distance from the boat, I could see something sticking out of the bottom. It looked like a small suitcase. There was a bottle leaning up against it as if it had been set there. The bottle was a quart milk and I could make out the embossing. It was not a rare bottle but at least it was something.


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## blobbottlebob




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## blobbottlebob

I picked up the milk and then the large tackle box. My hands were full, so I took my surface line up. There is a float above me that allows me to store items that I find. It has a dive flag showing to alert boaters that a diver is below. Inside, I have a plastic bin with dividers to store bottles without them damaging each other. I carefully placed the milk in one of the slots and then began to stow the tackle box. It was waterlogged and heavier than I thought as I pulled it out. I flung it up on top of my float. It landed heavily and unevenly on the edge and flipped the whole thing over. My flag was pointing at the bottom underwater and the milk bottle fell out and sank. Lost it. I didn’t lose the tackle box because the handle was still in my hand. I flipped the float upright and attempted to balance the tackle box on top. It wasn’t working very well. I looked back over at my boat and realized it was only fifteen or twenty feet away. I decided my life would be easier without lugging that thing around. I swam towards the boat and then flung the box over the side.


Next, I set a mental heading to recover the milk bottle sinking right next to the boat. Just a few feet away, I grabbed a bottle by the bottom. I was looking for a milk bottle. I had a milk bottle on my mind but this bottle was pint in size. The bottle I lost was a quart. As I slid my hand upward (still not having seen it), I felt an external wire stopper. Really really weird. Milks typically were sealed by a paper or cardstock disk that sat on a little ridge inside the mouth. Part of the paper lifted up to remove the seal (something like what an ice cream cup might have). Even the earliest milks didn’t have an outside wire stopper. I looked at it. As soon as I saw some of the side of the bottle, I recognized that it was stoneware. It was a clay bottle. That made sense in terms of that outside wire closure. I should have known it. I spun it around to look for the stamping (or debossing) of the company name. The bottle read GRISBAUM & KEHREIN. I recognized it as an 1880s brewery bottle from Milwaukee. A very nice bottle! I don’t find them very often. In hundreds upon hundreds of tanks, I had less than a half dozen total with years and years between finding each. 


This particular brand is not super rare by clay beer standards. In fact, it may be one of the more common examples. But then again, any clay is hard to find and they are old and crude. I was excited. I spent the rest of the tank searching for more. I found some other bottles but oddly, not the milk that I had lost early on. I thought that dive was a great way to end the season. I dropped off my boat at my parent’s lake house to winterize it and to store it for the following spring.


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## blobbottlebob

Here is a shot my dive buddy took of me swimming in with the clay.


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## blobbottlebob

Here is the bottle before it was even cleaned very well.


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## blobbottlebob

The next weekend, around Halloween, it was in the 70s degree-wise. Tom called me and said that we have to go again. “How often to you find clays?,” he argued. I told him that I had parked the boat for the year. He said that I should go get it. So, I did. 


We returned to the same general area. Since I had spent almost the entire tank searching after I had found the clay, I shifted my search a bit. I began scouring in a zig-zagging pattern. Once again, I found a bottle by the bottom. This time, in my mind’s eye, my initial impression was that it was a quart crown beer. As I was felling up the side of the bottle where the neck was, it ended abruptly. So, maybe is was a broken crown bottle. I felt the highest point on the neck to see if it was jagged or sharp. It wasn't. As I pondered the shape, it suddenly occurred to me that this was very similar to an oddball bottle style used in the 1870s called a spiral spring stopper. That seemed very unlikely. The bottle is almost never seen. Still, that's what it felt like. 


The spiral spring was a clever invention designed early on to make soda water bottles seal well to preserve the contents and cabonization. Amazingly, this pre-htchinson style of closure was resealable. The spring could be depressed with a finger to open the bottle. However, when you took your finger off, the spring would automatically reclose it. The bottle had a large bulb-like blob that contained the sprialing spring inside. One reason that this bottle style didn't catch on is that to drink the contents, your finger had to continuously press the sping down. So, it you put the rim to your mouth, your finger was up against your face.


I decided to take a look at the bottle. In an instant, I saw a yellowish clay body. Man am I dumb! That made perfect sense. It was a stoneware beer bottle. You'd think I would have realized after I had just found one the week before. This bottle was made by the HENRY SCHINZ company out of Milwaukee, Wis. It is not one of the relatively rare examples, either, but any clay beer is hard to find. After that day, we hung up our gear. The water gets pretty cold in November. The bottles would wait until the next year.


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## blobbottlebob

Here is the evolution in my mind's eye of what the bottle was. First a crown, then a spiral and finally the actual clay. You can kind of see it, right?


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## blobbottlebob

This is one o my favorites. The lake is calm with the sun going down and the bottle is nice.


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## blobbottlebob

Not the deepest stamping but the bottle is in excellent condition.


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## blobbottlebob

Fairy early in Spring, on May 2nd, we went right back where we left off. We searched and scoured and found some neat bottles, mostly glass beers and medicines. My buddy Tom found one of the most interesting items. It was an old solid brass "No Solicitation" sign from Clearwater Florida dated 1923. What it was doing there, we had no idea. After several trips, we decided that the area was over picked and we needed to move on. For most of that summer, we searched across a long section of shoreline looking for spots. By October, nearly a year after first finding those two clays, we were out of ideas. Tom agreed to try the clay beer area again. I really wasn't finding much until the end of the tank when I grabbed a loop seal glass beer bottle. I knew we wouldn't have left that, so, I figured I was in an unsearched spot. I was clawing way way down when I felt . . . a clay beer bottle! This time, I was ready and I recognized it right away. It was a GRISBAUM & KEHREIN, almost identical to the first one that I had found. This was my first duplicate clay. I had never found the same one twice. Plus, in less than one year, I had found more clays here than I had found in the previous 17 combined.


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## blobbottlebob




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## blobbottlebob

Another nice example.


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## blobbottlebob

Even after finding that clay, Tom was convinced that this location was done. He thought that there was nothing left and he didn't want to waste more time diving there.
Fast forwarding to the following summer, I asked Tom if he wanted to dive on a nice summer day. He couldn't make it because he had other committments (his kids had baseball or soccer). I told him that I was going without him. I knew right away where I would go. In fact, later when I called him to tell him that I had returned to the clay beer spot, he said, "Dude. You couldn't pay me a hundred bucks to go back there." I answered, "Dude. I'm pretty sure they did." But now I'm ahead of the story . . . 


I got out in the afternoon and started diving. Fairly early on, I found a citrate of magnesia and then an amber Husting's crown bottle. Neither of these bottles are very good but I doubted that we would leave them. That meant that there were still things here to find. Shortly after that, I saw a brass item. It was a fishing reel still partially attached to a corroding pole. I grabbed the reel and began to surface. Half way up, the reel broke loose of the pole and fell off. With cat-like (or more accurately catfish-like) reflexes, I caught the reel before it sank. It had cool looking petals on it which turned out to be typical of a fly fishing reel.


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## blobbottlebob




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## blobbottlebob

Shortly afterward, I bumped a bottle with my hand. This time, I had grabbed the bottle by the blob. There was no mistaking that crazy stoneware top. It was another clay beer! I began to pull my float line over in order to ascend and store the bottle when I had the thought, "What if there are more?" Like maybe someone was fishing here and tossed a bunch of them overboard. Who knows? I began to pat around with my left hand. I wasn't digging just patting at the bottom. The clay was in my right hand. As I was feeling around, I found something. It was a small round object too small to be the top of a bottle unless it was a medicine. I grabbed it and pulled it up out of the bottom. As I pulled the thing into view, I was amazed to see that I was holding a bottle but only by the cork that still sealed it. It was another clay beer bottle with its' seal intact! Wow! 


I took the line that connects me to the float at the surface off of my arm and marked my place at the bottom with it. That would allow me to stow the bottles and then return right where I just was on the bottom. As I ascended, a whole bunch of bubbles came up around my face. I realized that the cork that had sealed the second clay had come out and the air trapped within had bubbled out. I had likely loosened that cork by unwittingly picking the bottle up by the stopper. Oh well, I still had the bottle and that was the main thing. This was pretty exciting. Instead of waiting two years, or even two weeks, I had found two clays in about two minutes!


Unlike my earlier clays, these two were rare examples. Both had banners, with  the stamping or debossing inside. One was from W. WEBER in Racine, Wis. I have never really found any decent bottle from that city much less an obscure stoneware like this. The other was from CHAS. GIPFEL, Milwaukee. It featured a cobalt band around the top and a small cross and star. Very cool.


When I sank back down, I found no more clays. I did get some glass beer bottles and an antique folding anchor to finish off my tanks. 
This area wound up being extraordinarily productive for clay beers for me. My dive buddy never found one though he did rack up some amazing bottles during the same time period including two impossible to find hutchinson sodas. I have no idea why so many clays came out for me there, but I certainly am not complaining. From time to time, I plan to try a tank or two over there in the hopes that maybe just maybe, more clays are out there to be found.


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## blobbottlebob




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## blobbottlebob

That sums it up. Let me know what you think, Bob


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## botlguy

What I think is that was fun. Thanks for sharing your adventure.
Jim S


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## CreekWalker

Excellent story. The clay bottles are great finds anytime. Keep posting! 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Mikez

Great stories and amazing bottles. 
Any markings on the reel?


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## blobbottlebob

Thanks Jim Bottleguy.
And to you Creekwalker. Wish I would find more of these but this spot really increased my collection of clays;
And thanks to you to too Mikez. The reel says Kazoo Shakespeare. I don't think its a great reel but it is different than most casting reels.


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## sandchip

Those are some great bottles with a fun story to boot.  Enjoyed it!


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## Mikez

Well the value is the coolness with it was acquired. I bet it will make a nice display. 
I bet there's a good, or not so good maybe, story about about how it got there. I can never help thinking about the last guy to use an artifact, whether it's a bottle, fishing gear or arrowhead.


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## shotdwn

Great story and a great job of story telling. Make you feel like you were along for the adventure. Great bottles too. Just love those stoneware bottles.


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## blobbottlebob

Thanks Sandchip and Shotdown.
And Mikez. I wonder about the previous users sometimes too. Those clays for example are 1880s. The world was way different for whoever drank those. Wonder why they didn't return the clays but I'm glad they discarded them.


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## GEEMAN

Good job all the way around Bob. Pictures of cool bottles are nice and all but I enjoy the story of the hunt just as much if not more. Good for you ! You work hard for your finds. Due to circumstances out of my control it's been two years in row I have missed the Milwaukee bottle show now. GRRRR   Have you guys ever done any diving on the old bridge about a mile east of town here ?


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## blobbottlebob

Hey Brian Geeman. 
Thanks for your nice comments. Sorry you missed the shows. And I think we have tried it without a lot of success years ago.


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## bottlecrazy

I enjoyed the story!  And I admire you for getting out there.  Good luck with some more clays, or, really, anything nice.


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## blobbottlebob

Thanks Bottlecrazy. I love diving and finding good bottles makes it really fun. I'm just waiting for things to warm up now.


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## hemihampton

I see you found a Weber cone top beer can. Do you find cone tops often. I collect those. LEON.


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## blobbottlebob

Hey Leon,
I do find cans but it's not too often that they are any good. They're usually pretty far gone. Apparently, the color changes on those Weber ones compared to dry stored ones.


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## blobbottlebob

Hemi check this one out. This was one of my favorites. You can still see the hole in the can though.
Someone found out I collect bottles and gave me the labelled beer which was super cool.


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## hemihampton

I've know a few people who dig out old cans from drained lake bottoms. I've dug a few myself. Sometimes they will come out in real good shape sometimes not so good, depends. The colors usually do change especially the reds like to turn dark maroon. If they are found deep in the mud they get better protection, with no oxygen not much rusting. Some of mine below. LEON.


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## hemihampton

Pic of my Weber, you can see how yours color changed compared to mine. How many do you have? you could have some rare ones & not even know it? LEON.


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## midway49

Good story!  Thanks for sharing.


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## RelicRaker

How cool! They're in great condition too. I occasionally find a clay beer at a dig site, but they're usually banged up or broken at the neck. That bottom silt and mud are far more gentle than old trash dump fill.


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## riverdiver

I enjoyed your story and really enjoyed the pics, I love the clay beers too!


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## Bass Assassin

That’s a great story. Thanks for the photos and good luck out there


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## GLASSHOPPER55

Just like others said, great post and story. Thanks for taking us along!

GLASSHOPPER


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## blobbottlebob

Hey Hemihampton. Cool cans. Thanks or posting the pics. Especially the Weber, I've never seen it not faded from the bottom. I like the yellows which are all gone when I find them. I found one of those cone tops with the indian literally upside down but it was in rough shape. I guess I get too hung up on condition but I've got a lot of junk already and it's hard to keep taking rusty metal....


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## blobbottlebob

Thanks Midway 49!
Check out this picture that I didn't post with the story. It is the brass sign my dive buddy found when we went back.


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## blobbottlebob

Hey Relicraker. I'm not sure why but I've always had really good luck with clays. I have found them broken, but I'd say more often than not they are whole and in reasonably good condition. As long as they tossed them in whole, they have a good chance cause they were made so durable. Plus, they are just so ancient looking. Prehistoric really which is awesome. But another amazing thing is how consistantly well made they are. I've never found them crudely formed or mis-shapen. Very high quality for hand made items. It seems like the people who made them did not accept second rate work which should have occurred during the glazing process.


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## blobbottlebob

Hey Riverdiver. Thanks. Nice to hear from fellow divers out there.
And Bass Assassin. Thanks for the good luck wishes. I can always use the luck!
And thanks to you too Glasshopper.


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## hemihampton

when you say cone top with Indian I assume your talking about Chief Oshkosh? I got a friend that specializes in upside down cans. I'd be Interested in any you want bring back & sell to me. LEON.


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## blobbottlebob

Hey Hemi,
I could post a picture but not tonight. If this thing were minty, I bet it would be really good. But it rusted and is in poor condition. I thought it was a Weber with an Indian on it but we'll see when I post it.


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## sandchip

blobbottlebob said:


> ...Check out this picture that I didn't post with the story. It is the brass sign my dive buddy found when we went back..



Cool!  What does it say?


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## blobbottlebob

Hey Sand.
The brass sign was a No Solicitation sign from Clearwater Florida dated 1923. It was far from home in a spot with no signs anywhere around. Crazy find for Tom but it was cool.


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## blobbottlebob

Here's a picture from the ride out on a fall day in 2014 when I found one of those clays.
It was cold outside and colder in the water but the wet suit made it tolerable...


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## blobbottlebob

Here you go Hemi,
This has corroded even more sitting in a dry box. It looks worse than I remember. There is an indian pictured on the can with a huge headdress. But, like I said, rough shape.


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## coldwater diver

Really enjoyed the story Bob. When I read your stories I also as a diver know all the prep that goes into the before and the work after.
I can appreciate your dive buddies attitude towards a place that just isn't making him feel the desire to go back and be skunked again.
But you yourself having some 6th sense about it and being rewarded. I usually go from shore although I do have a diving kayak now (that I love,
I have my dive  flag on that less idiots on boats and jet skiis running over my flag while diving). My friend who has done lots of lake diving speaks of 
instances of long ago spring clean outs being found. Basically people cleaning out their barns n houses dragging it out on the ice to deep water areas and when ice out
happens, gravity does the rest. I have never found one but its a honey hole under water apparently.  
               Really loved seeing your finds and reading your story.   Kevin


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## blobbottlebob

Thanks Coldwater Kevin.
I don't know if the kayak could hold all your gear but if you just use it as a surface buoy, it probably works. I dove off a canoe before and it is tough to stow all that stuff and not tip it. Sometimes it helps just to suit up shallow and leave the boat by shore.

About jet skis, I once had two jet skis using my flag as a racing buoy and it was only five or six feet deep. I pressed myself to the bottom hoping they wouldn't bonk into my tank...

I do find what I call trash piles now and then. They usually have nothing great - just broken stuff. But it is a good place to find bottles with the stoppers still on them. I once found a pile with lots of broken hutches. I took the blobs then kept the stoppers. I later polished them and put them with bottles that are missing stoppers.

Say. Are you rooting around for glass or do you have areas where you can see them without digging and clawing?


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## coldwater diver

Bob this kayak does the trick. I can put all my gear behind me strapped in with a steel 120 or two steel 72 tanks. Even w me sitting right down next to that weight its still level. I can and have paddled as much as 25 miles. ( energy bars n water a must). Total body work out, no matter if you are exploring river, lakes its a nice base to dive from. Canoe works for shore dives(holds lots of gear) Been there with jet a**h***rs or my flag being pulled up by boater not knowing what it is and that there is an extremely pissed off person at the other end. Ergo cold water diver. Finding means surface picks, seein just a corner or a sliver of a bottle and digging it up, digging in an area that was a dump1'-6' deep. Digging in sand w a rake, sinking your hands in mud visibility zero. All of that.


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## blobbottlebob

Sweet Kevin,
It sounds like we are doing similar stuff though I can't say I've ever paddled more than a mile or two. I've definitely had the boat pull up my flag before but almost every time the people were very nice. I had my line get caught on somebody's motor (which means they probably drove right over my flag) but luckily, they didn't drag me along or anything. I came up and unhooked it and again they were nice at least. But I've done stuff too. Once, I wasn't finding anything in a lake and I decided to cover as much bottom as I could and keep moving. Since I wasn't surfacing to stow anything, I was pretty far from where I had started. Then I see this brand new, I mean really nice looking anchor. No zebra mussels, no algae, just clean and nice. I grabbed it to take it up and then saw that the anchor line was curving upward. That could only mean one thing, it was still attached to a boat. Oops! I set it back and made haste to put some distance between me and those fishermen.

Anybody ever ask you to find things that they lost? This happens to me on a fairly regular basis and I have lots of stories about that kind of stuff. I'll tell three here, but this cold go long...


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## blobbottlebob

Okay. This first story has both success and failure to recover someone's lost items. You'll see.

 I'm at the launch with all my gear and some guys approach me and say that they are doing a muskey study at a local college. They have transmitter tags on caught-and-released fish and they follow these fish around and record where they spend their time. Presumably they are learning more about the habits of these awesome fish. They record the data on waterproof plastic sheets (which is smart) but the entire log book got dropped in the lake by one of the researchers after they lost their balance. Could I help recover it?

I agreed to meet them with full tanks at a later date. The gentleman that meets me is the guy who lost the book (really anyone else would be wasting my time). He takes me right where he thinks he lost it. It is about 12 feet deep in a partially rocky, partially weedy area. Not the worst place to lose it. It shouldn't be too buried where the bottom is harder. I looked around about ten minutes, trying not to stir things up too badly but I had no results. I surfaced and asked if he could give me a better handle on what the conditions were (wind and waves), where exactly he thought it fell in, that type of thing. He did give me a better feel for where it was. This time down I focused right where he thought it was. In just a minute or two, I saw the book binder down, pages partially opened. I was (secretly) proud of myself. No bragging at the surface because I'd rather not be an a-hole but still, I know that this was not an easy challenge. This lake is huge and murky with poor visibility. It is super easy to be off in your memory and fifty or seventy five feet away in any direction might make for a mighty hard task.  I saved their data and now I could go look for bottles.

Then he asked me for more help. A muskey has not moved for about a month. He's wondering if I could go recover the transmitter. It would help them to get it back. Okay. I can do that. We move to the other side of the lake in about six feet of water. There is a mat of weeds at the bottom here. It's like a gigantic scotch brite pad covering everything. Not as good of a spot for sure. But maybe I'll see this big fish skeleton and get right on it. He uses what looks like a fish net with no net on it to find the signal from the transmitter. The transmitter itself is a small black wire with a double A battery attached. I already know, I will never find a small black wire here with that bottom but again the fish might help me get it. At the boat he gives me a direction and I swim around for ten or fifteen minutes. Nothing but scotch brite. Again, I return to the boat and ask for more specific directions. Can you tell me precisely where the signal is please? How far away from the boat is the signal? He points north and says, "It could be anywhere from here" then swings his arm 90 degrees to west and says, "to here." Okay. How close to the boat? "I'd say within three hundred feet." 

Again, I don't want to be a jerk but this guy has no idea what he is asking. He's asking me to find a tiny black needle in a 'haystack' that is mostly black and green and stringy and is at least the size of one football field probably larger. I said that I would search more but that he shouldn't be holding his breath in anticipation of me finding it at this point. I searched another half hour and gave up.

At least I recovered the data log, right?


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## coldwater diver

OH Yes they have Bob. Most recent was an elderly lady 90ish. Well she was backing her car out of the garage, thought she had put the car in park. She didn't, she just braked and got out of her car, then somehow got run over to boot. Across the street from her is a good sized small pond. After running her over the car continued to pick up speed in reverse crossed the street hit the berm before the pond and went airborne into the pond. Well she had her pocket book with all sorts of cherished memories in it that was not recovered upon getting her car out of the pond. That's where I come in , my neighbor was a home care provider for her and knows I dive. I say sure $100 a tank. Go to the site pond is maybe 40x50 yards ( how bad can it be?). Within minutes no viz even though I really tried not to disturb the bottom. 30 minutes later I am thinking I'm going to be unsuccessful   with this I feel what I believe is a snapping turtle on my shoulder and neck was the typical giant handbag some women carry around. (Scared the crap out of me).  Generally speaking I have about a 50/50 chance of finding in open water as many will say it dropped in here(see photo), when it in reality was not.  You are right to as what the conditions were wave action , prevailing winds as they can move things pretty far.


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## blobbottlebob

Nice recovery! Way to go.
We had a guy launching his boat right in front of us. For some reason, he got out of his pick up while launching despite the fact that he had a buddy holding a rope to the boat standing on the pier alongside. He was just going to be a second apparently, cause he left his door open. It wasn't properly in park. Same as your story. Very slowly it backs up into the water. He doesn't notice until he is all the way on the pier. By now it has some momentum and he is too far away. By the time he runs back, the truck is five feet from shore and hurrying further. He runs back to the dock and jumps onto the cab. (Not sure why). It dents inward. The thing comes to a stop but there is only a few inches of the cab above the water line. Strangely enough, it is still running.
My buddy suited up in a wet suit (no scuba gear), swam out and recovered his wallet, and some stuff off the front seat.

When we returned from our dives, we heard that they had to call a crane to get it out. Pretty big screw up for that poor guy.

I think I am going to start a new thread for recoveries 'cause I can relate multiple stories...


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## blobbottlebob

Hey Kevin,
As I was thinking about your story last night, I realized that the purse must have been partially buoyant to get on top of you like that. Which means that the purse could move around instead of settling in. Visibility definitely helps in that case. Have you had many interactions with turtles and other wildlife?

I never discussed money with the people from the Muskey study. I was kind-of hoping that if I found their book, they might throw me a little prize, but he never offered. They may have been cash strapped I suppose. They may have thought that it was super easy to find. The book that I found was almost an entire summer of following and logging fish. They would have basically lost the year without it. Maybe I got a footnote when the thing was published? But I've never seen the study. At least I did something good.


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## coldwater diver

Hi Bob I would say $100 bucks to strap a tank on is fair. Fill is $6-7, suiting up & un-suiting, gear cost, actual time underwater looking. 
Pretty lame no nothing from the Musky guys. I see some very big turtles some (not tellin fish stories) almost as big as a coffee table. 
My worst scare was in a smalll lake, I was digging an area and creating zero viz conditions. I was trying to create a current to clear my area of 
the silt I stirred up. Slowly coming into view right at the hole I was digging is the "Biggest Snapper" 18" from my face. He seemed to be all puffed
up in a way protecting his area. I backed away, he didn't. Typing this now I just got a shiver up my spine! Normally in better viz you can see them, there's  
a moment you and the turtle size each other up and then go your separate ways. I have been attached swimming w just a mask by a catfish getting close
 to this moving ball of what turned out to be hundreds of baby catfish. I mist have got a spike in my foot, as it swelled up bigtime. If you see one stay away.


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## blobbottlebob

Nice tip.
The biggest snapper I've seen here is in the 25 to 30 pound range. Way smaller than your picture.
I have fish bump me or bonk me pretty hard. Those were low visibility rivers where the fish just freaked out when I cornered them. Once I thought that I had been hit with an oar but when I surfaced, there was no boat.


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## hemihampton

I seen lots of Snappers & that's by far the biggest one I ever seen. LEON.


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## seaeo1

Cool thread guys! Love the stories. I havent posted much but I've been bottle diving for 20 years. I own a marine towing, salvage & dive company in New York. Been "Black Water" diving all my life. Mostly in Long Island Sound ( New York & Connecticut waters). Have found many dumping sites pre- 1900 as well as many wrecks over the years. Will try to post some pics and stories of my finds if anyone is interested.


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## blobbottlebob

Nice to hear from you Seaeo1. I'd would definitely be interested in your adventures.


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## coldwater diver

Hemi just so you know thats not me in photo, Im crazy but I like my life just the way it is. I can just see a photo shoot like that go in the wrong direction quickly. But thats as big as some I swim past in New England.  Seaeo1 , same as Bob I would love to see what you have found and hear what your dives are like, I'm a transplant from the Big Apple myself, to Maine but was certified for open water diving in Bayside NY.


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## blobbottlebob

Better shots of the Weber.


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## blobbottlebob




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## sandchip

I would've pooped my suit!  If that snapper could only talk.  One that big would have to be well over 100 years old.  It could tell you where all the dumping sites are!  I know you can hear anything, but I've heard of them being found in the past with arrowheads and minnie balls embedded in them.


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