The only reason to lake dive below the thermocline is to look at rock features or retrieve boat anchors. You are right, it is cold. In the summer if we wanted to do a deep dive we would don a relatively thick wet suit, sweat like a pig and almost overheat before we got in the water, then finally get cooled off at depth.
Normally everything worth seeing (the fish and dropped fishing rods) were above the thermocline. Mid summer it might get as deep as 25 or 30 feet in a more clear lake like Beaver in Arkansas.
When swimming in farm ponds as a kid sometimes there would actually be two thermoclines in a really super muddy pond. The top inch would be so hot it felt like it was scalding you, then to three feet down it was warm/hot, then below it freezing cold (or at least it felt like it). The modus operandi was to quickly get in and become a human diffuser and quickly move about to stir it all up to a more comfortable average. The cold water mostly stayed on the bottom but the the scalding hot stuff right on the top got stirred up where it was comfortable.
This is in a pond that looked like chocolate milk. My what we would swim in back then. Us and the cows.
Last edited by snrub; 04/08/18 11:08 AM.
