Found an online site by the Michigan Underwater Divers Club that discusses various dives conducted by the group’s members. Tried to find a “contact us” button or any way to contact the owners of the site, but with no luck. So, without the site’s permission to reprint their article, I’m paraphrasing because I found it interesting to read about this group’s dive in Barron Lake and wanted to share. The piece was posted May 19, 2011.
The article doesn’t say where exactly in the lake the dive took place, but based on some of the initial sentences in the piece, I’m going to speculate the divers entered the lake somewhere along Barron Lake Road.
The person who wrote the piece, user name “dwmack,” described Barron Lake’s shoreline as “hard pack silt and sand with a sharp drop off” noting the weeds started in about five feet of water and stopped at about 11 feet down the slope, with the weed height averaging roughly three feet.
The divers, according to the article, noticed considerable large game fish in the weed line at 11 feet and that there was “a sprinkling of healthy clams.” It also was noted visibility was easily six to eight feet and the water was comfortable in a standard wet suit.
So what did the divers discover on the floor of the lake?
While “traversing the slopes between 15 to 20 feet depth, there were numerous tires, concrete blocks, concrete in cans, and homemade anchors apparently having been used as mooring buoys.”
Plus, one fully-intact Christmas tree at 19 feet, one nice-size row boat at 20 feet, some cans and bottles, dive goggles, a tackle box and an arrow presumed to be lost by someone who was bow hunting carp.
You may be wondering how a Christmas tree ended up in Barron Lake.
Awhile back I heard from someone on the lake who recalled that in the early 1990s he observed several people rounding up Christmas trees residents had left along side their garbage cans for pick up. He said they tied several of them together, anchored them (could be that’s why there were concrete blocks and concrete in cans on the bottom of the lake) and sunk them into the water, thereby creating a habitat for the fish.
jm feb.11, 2021
