Scubapaul Came to Town!

I have met many really nice people over the last few years. People who are very generous to me with their knowledge, time, resources, friendship, or hunting skills. Blackwaterdiver is one of those people - plus he knows the value of dogs in his life :). He was kind enough to take me out diving to his private spot and let me cloud up the bottom while he hunted for the big ones. We decided to do an exploritory dive first. They are fun for potential, but this one turned out to be just that - exploring the river bottom and all of its silt and sand - but no teeth. We both called it a dive a little before our planned 30 minute meeting time, and decided to move back to an area he knew would produce. We took a long surface swim out to where we were going to drop and i went to turn my light on - no dice. It worked on the first dive with no issue, but would not turn on, real bummer after a long surface swim. I decided to go down anyway and try it without it rather than swim back to the boat. On the way down, it suddenly came on :). I went down and hit whale bone areas fairly quickly. It was very different than the rivers I have been diving in the past, so i took a bit to get used to for me. Within the first 5 minutes, i found a nice angi (you can debate with me if you want from the pic) at 3.25". I kept losing the bed and with the heavy silt layer, turning around or stopping was not really an option. I was moving around and saw a broken mako, but paused cause it didn't look right and as i reached for it i realized it was a paratodus benedeni - awesome!!!. It had tip damage but who cares. And it cleaned up real nice - check out the pix. After that, everything was all gravy for me. Dive 3 started the same as dive 2, my light would not turn on. We were closer to the boat this time so i swam back and spoke with our spider-fearless capt (inside joke). While sitting there talking about how it had to be the fuse, it suddenly turned on again - and rather than waste time playing with it i just turned around and went under. No big ones turned up, but i was still in the glow of the PB on the first dive. BWD did turn up a couple of beauties though. I managed to bring up a couple of bottles, including a old coke bottle which was pretty neat. Time came though to hit the road again for home :( so we called it after 3 dives. I greatly look forward to another shot to find a big one. When I got home i was able to discover the problem with my light - major flood in the battery housing. I opened it up to a lovely bath of brown water for my leg and foot :)