NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/683373
JUNE 2016 • NEBRASKAland 53 direct flows, and has numerous coves protected from the wind. While there are plenty of sandpits in eastern Nebraska, they don't offer the water clarity of those in the west due to the soils that surround them. Brian Shreve of Heartland Scuba in Lincoln said more than one diver has come to his shop to rent gear or fill tanks, saying they stood on a dock and could see the bottom in 10 feet of water, only to find once they were in the lake they could only see 2 or 3 feet. "Because of the way light reflects differently off particulates, the horizontal visibility is always less than what vertical visibility is," Shreve said. That said, members of the Greater Omaha Scuba Club have found one eastern Nebraska sandpit offering enough visibility to dive: Lake No. 2 at Louisville State Recreation Area. The lake had offered good diving decades ago, but it wasn't until the Commission removed rough fish and used alum to control algae in the lake that clear water returned. The deepest of three sandpit lakes at the park at 27 feet, visibility at Lake No. 2 reaches 10 feet on a good day. "We can't expect much more than that in the Midwest," said Connie Springer, a member of the club, who dives there at least twice a month in the summer. The club does underwater lake cleanups around eastern Nebraska, collecting all of the garbage they can find around the shoreline to raise awareness of the littering problem, and at places like Branched Oak, Fremont and Wehrspann lakes, the visibility has never topped 3 feet. "We've done lake cleanups where you can't even see your gauges," Springer said. "They call it brail diving, where you're just feeling your way along the bottom to see if you can find anything." There are other opportunities just across the border for Nebraska divers. DiVentures and Underwater World Scuba, both dive shops in Omaha, have dive sites in abandoned rock quarries in Iowa with good to excellent visibility. More experienced divers enjoy diving and spearfishing in the tailrace of Fort Randall Dam in South Dakota. "You can see remnants of when the dam was built, the air hoses and truck tires they left down there," said Mark Rettig, superintendent of Niobrara State Park and an expert diver. "It looks like they blew the horn and everybody rushed out of there and they let the water go and what was there stayed there." There are abundant fish, including huge paddlefish, in the tailrace. Some people enjoy drift dives below the hydroplant, and others escape the current in two other spillway basins. Visibility in the tailrace is dependent on the conditions in Lake Francis Case, but can reach 20 feet or more. Rettig said those conditions can carry down the Missouri River into Nebraska past the Sunshine Bottom area to the mouth of Ponca Creek. While best suited for the experienced due to the danger snags present, drift diving in this part of the Missouri can be enjoyable Purdy said diving in Nebraska is "underrated." While visibility is limited, learning to deal with it makes better divers, and helps them appreciate days when visibility is limited in places where it is typically limitless. "It's all relative," he said. ■ Editor's note: The author was certified to scuba dive in 2014 and is still trying to learn how to take photographs in the alien underwater world and to not breathe through his nose. Dan Nichols of Ogallala pulls in a walleye he shot with his underwater spear gun while diving at Lake McConaughy. Spearfishermen from across the Midwest come to the lake to hunt walleye.