The Marble Spot

I haven't hunted since the last time I went to the river. I stopped going because the Lowcountry of SC got into a really wet weather pattern and the river level went way up. Even though its never very deep, beyond a certain level the Edisto is impossible to dive. The current is just too fast and no matter how much weight we wear, it isn't enough. It'll blast the mask right off your face. Anyway, the water level rose so high that I thought it was done for the river. All the sudden the rain stopped. It has now been weeks without it and the water level of my favorite diving spot is back to a divable level.

As soon as I hit the water I noticed how cool it was. Good thing I wore a wetsuit! I hit the bottom and immediately started tumbling downriver. Even though the water level was manageable, the current was still moving pretty fast. In order to position myself to hunt or move up-river I had to jam a screwdriver into the bottom and kick hard. I finally got all my gear situated only to realize that the water was extremely dark, probably due to the increased tanin levels in the water since the swamps are all still draining. I struggled to distinguish shapes, and soon I realized that I needed to move into shallower water so more surface light could make it through. I would definitely need my light in the deeper spots!

Shallower water and better light greeted me closer to the shore. I started finding stuff right away. I managed a few decent teeth, but the current was really pushing hard. Every time I stopped to take a video I had to kick extra hard since I couldn't use my screwdriver. I noticed new gravel in places that were only sand before. I could have fanned there and probably did pretty well, but I decided to keep swimming and picking up loose teeth. And bottles - I got two nice old medicine bottles.

Man it was nice to get out and hunt again. So nice that I had to go back the next day! And the next. The weezling came along both days and racked alongside me. Nothing like father & son time outdoors! The gravel I swam over on the first day needed some TLC and we intended to provide it. Even though it had been a while since I last fanned, I kept my pimp hand strong and I moved plenty of sand. This was definitely an old rock bed - everything was river stained. As I fanned, I saw that unlike other areas in the river, the bottom of this gravel bed was marl. That means the fossils washed here from down-river. Even though we found a bunch of shark teeth, almost all of them were mangled. Who knows how far they tumbled before they ended up here.

We also ended up finding a bunch of marbles in this spot - I can imagine a kid years ago throwing them one at a time into the water, lazily passing the time away. Also in this spot were some of the largest pottery shards I've found yet. When we got back to the landing, a local was out fishing and asked us what I found. We showed him our bottles, teeth, pottery, and marbles. He told me a story about a "house of ill repute" that was really near the spot we were hunting. He called it Betsy Reeves Fish camp. He might have said Betsy Reeds Fish Camp, too. It was a little tough to understand him through the cheekfull of tobacco.