Freediving the Willy

[FreediveWI]

More time in the water is one of the big things that really attracted me to freediving. I have been on too many dive trips where some guy sucks his tank down in 20 minutes and the divemaster makes us all surface with 2,000 psi and go back to the boat-sometimes it's even the divemaster who runs out early! :-X

With freediving you are free from those constraints.

If we do two dives on the same wreck I actually get more time in because I don't need to stay out of the water for an hour and change tanks. I can dive for three hours straight with the right wetsuit on. 8)

The last time I was divig up at Lake Wazee I spent almost 8 hours in the water. I could cover more ground than the scuba divers and didn't have to get out to switch tanks or get them refilled. After all, spending time in the water is really what it's all about.

This past winter my buddy and I were spearfishing in Lake Monona. We were in the water for a little over an hour when this scuba diver came in all suited up in his drysuit, pony bottle, flags and floats, dive lights, ect. He spent MAYBE 30 minutes in the water and then left. We spent another 2 hours in there and saw all kinds of fish- musky, northern, bass, carp, ect. We speared some and I took picutres of others. It was a great day and we got to see a lot of things that the other diver missed.

Some of the best things, like the HUGE tiger musky, were in very shallow water, less than 4', and my back would have been breaking the surface if I had a tank on it. When we spearfish everything is very shallow- less than 20'. The shallows are where all of the fish are at in the inland lakes. Once you past 20' you enter the mud zone and ther just aren't the plants and 02 there to support large amounts of fish. If you want to see fish you need to stay shallow. If you want to get close enough to pet them you need to stop blowing bubbles which sacre them away- except for bass which are so stupid that I don't think anything would scare them away.

Next time you get out diving try and do about an hours worth of freedivng before you put your tank on. You'll have scouted out the area to see where the best places to go are and I bet that you'll use a LOT less air because your body gets acclimated to the water. This is a big reason why I always teach the snorkeling dive as part of the openwater course. If you get a good 30 minutes of snorkeling in before you have to go down and do mask clears it just seems to make everything go so much easier. It's too bad that so many orginizations now make that dive optional. It really does make you a more comfortable diver.