I'm in the process of getting certified to Scuba Dive for an upcoming trip to St. Thomas. I just wondered if any of you guys have dove any of your fishing holes. I've got a friend that took video of some really nice smallmouth bass spawning a couple months ago. I just thought it might be a good tool to help understand the fish and just to observe them in the clearer lakes Although some of those more popular holes may have a million hooks down there to get hung on. Anybody tried this?

I've never even scuba dived but I've always thought about this. It would be very cool to be able to that and see what's actually down there

I've dove a few gravel pits in East Texas and studied a bass or two. Vis is to bad in most lakes. Try to go to Jost Van Dyke and dive "the playground" on the Atlantic side, lots of game fish Cobia, Tarpon, etc.

Ive never done it but it sounds like a good way to fill up your tackle box

Very few lakes in Texas that have enough visibility to make it worthwhile. Amistad is about the only one I would mess with.

Dove my deep water spots on Fork and retrieved close to 700 dollars worth of 10XD's.
Most of them were mine already though.
Pretty dark and really dangerous.
My daddy always said you can't fix stupid and he never fixed me.

Doug Hannon used to dive to study bass behavior.

I became SCUBA certified back in the mid-90s in Virginia, for that very reason...to go under water and look at what the Bass were doing and where they were hanging out. Unfortunately, the visibility in almost every lake I was fishing was so poor that it became frustrating and a monumental waste of time and effort.

However, actually obtaining the certification was fun and challenging so, the certification part was not wasted time. I did my final certification dives in Florida and it was a hoot.

I did ALOT of diving back when I lived in Wisconsin. Lots of Greatlakes shipwreck diving and some lake diving also did quite a bit of cave diving in Florida and Mexico.

Saw some big schools of big smallmouth on the Great Lakes and enjoyed watching Bass (large and smallmouth), Walleye, Muskies, Pike and even small panfish in the smaller lakes. You can see them realting to points rock piles grass lines and all the classic bass cover.

These lakes down here are too muddy for safe diving there are a few exceptions like Possum Kingdom and Whitney but lakes like Fork, forget about it. Too much line and hooks down there and with only a few feet of horzontial visability...no thanks!

There is a show on TV called Hook-N-Look which divers (in clear northern lakes) will fish and then show you what they are fishing on an underwater camera carried by divers with U/W mics. From the been there done that school of learning it is very interesting way to learn about fish behavior. Not sure about doing it around here though.

Isn't there some Fork lore that some commercial scuba divers went down to fix pipes or something and there were 15-20 pound Bass hanging out?

Thanks for the feedback guys. I figured most of the lakes would be to dirty to see much. We do have a few clear lakes up here in Oklahoma. Tenkiller, Murray and Arbuckle can get really clear. Fork is my favorite lake but I can only imagine all the junk to get tangled up in down there. I've probably lost a few hundred hooks in there myself.

Yep I've done it a few times. One of them made me laugh. Found a really nice spot that the graph showed tons of fish that looked like they were staging for the spawn. Fished it several times and couldnt get bit where the fish were on the graph. Went back a few weeks later with a dry suit and low and behold.....crappie. Went and got some small jigs and had crappie for dinner that night.

FLW Pickwick there was a guy graphing fish in practice, but only a few fish, so didn't think they were bass. He dropped an underwater camera down and confirmed they were big bass. He got a top 10 out of it I think.

when I dive to the bottom of a 10' swimming pool my ears start popping from the pressure. Is scuba diving the same thing?