Lingen

[Eddie]

Saturday 9.30am, weather sunny and warm, myself and my buddy (Adje) got kitted up and walked the 50 meters from the car park, up the hill to the lake, (am I glad I'm on a single 15 litre! I don't know how you lot do it with twins!) even at 9.45am there where loads of sun baking bodies on the sandy banks!

With great relief we sat down in the water and put our fins on, rolling over and fining away to a depth of 3 meters (max depth in Lingen 15 meters) vis was a good 6-7 meters, we came upon a shoal of Perch and Roach, a huge Pike, (must have been a good meter and a half! Shit! and I had left my camera in the car!) was following the Roach, we just sat on the bottom while the pike slowly stopped and seemed to select one out, and with a sudden flip of the tail he had it! I have never seen anything like it, boy was he fast! after watching for what seemed like a few minutes but turned out to be 10!

We then descended to 8 meters to practice our navigation skills with the compass and went North to the "bathroom" here there is a complete bathroom setup, toilet, sink, bath and a mirror! while we looking around we found a Mares mask and snorkel under the bath! so needless to say that came home with me! it must have been lost the day before as we where the first ones in that Saturday morning.

Turning West we headed for the pipe graveyard, here there are numerous sizes two meter long pipes strewn about on the bottom, shinning the torch into one, we where surprised when a meter long eel came out! it seemed to inspect us and then just swam back into its home!

After a while we finned our way South to the Christmas trees, about fifteen Christmas trees are set into concrete filled buckets! this sounds silly but you have to see it to believe it, just like a petrified forest! eerie, no fish or plants!

We headed off down to 13 meters, not much to see here just the usual fresh water muscles and loads of shrimps scurrying around on the sandy bottom.

On our way back to our starting point we hung around a bunch of weeds for a while, just sitting there on the bottom watching some perch arguing about some territory or something, then out of the weeds a rather huge mirror carp came out and started to sift the bottom for food! being an ex fresh water fisherman I had caught loads of these fish on the hook, but being a diver you see these fish in their natural habitat and they are truly a wondrous sight, so graceful.

After a good 55 minute dive and with a good 120 bar left we left the water and had a water side shower! that's what I like about Germany, there are showers and spotless toilets at every recreational swim and dive sites, after a nice drink of coffee we headed of home.


 

[Davey Willo]

Nice report Eddie

So you DO get wet over there then  ;)

[JohnK]

Hi Eddie - where abouts is Lingen - I`ve got family in Germany and this is the first dive site I`ve heard of - if its close to them it`ll go on my list !!!

[Eddie]

Hi Kirky, its about 70 km from Enschede where I live in Holland, nearest German citys are Nordhorn and Gronau (about 10 km from my house) if you look at the map and follow the border between Germany and Holland there is a (bite) taken out of Holland, I live just by it. there are loads of divesites in Germany...