Day one search for Roger 10/13/14
Scott and I traveled to Lynxville WI on the Mississippi River. We wet with The Crawford Sheriff’s Dept. and workers of Lock # 9. We viewed the location of where Roger fell from his boat. We began with running our sonar in this location with the help and cooperation of Lock # 9. Working downstream we spotted a target that I felt needed to be checked out first hand late in the afternoon. It started raining at noon this day and we where soaked and cold. We felt it worthwhile to stay at it to see what this object was in the rocks of the wing dam. Suiting up in scuba gear I found it to be either on the move or the formation of the rocks fooled us.
Day two search for Roger 10/15/14
Traveled back to Lynxville and met up with Rogers brother in-law Len who agreed to help me out and drive the pontoon. Scott could not make this trip. About a dozen boats with many departments and local volunteers organizing to do shore line search. I shared a method I had learned about on a search earlier this year to see what a body would do once on the bottom in the current. It consist of two jugs and a line attached to the jugs longer than the deepest depths you are dealing with. One jug is filled with water and the other is sealed up to hold air to float. I know that an average body only weights only 15-18 pounds under water. The idea is to see the path of something going along the bottom. The filled jug is then put into the water of the known location. You let the air filled one go so you can see the path of the one on the bottom. This is where we where all very surprised! The jug went down and very fast into the gate roller and got snagged up in that area. They closed the gate and we tried to pull it out put found it to be snagged up. We cut the line and tried this again with another jug but farther away from the gate. Once again it was immediately pulled with great force into the open gate. The Lock workers shut the gates down for us so we could run our pontoon and sonar safely in front of the gates to see if we could see anything. We were able to produce an amazing image of what is in front of the gate and out in front of the gate. There is nothing of interest in here now. There is an area between the roller and concrete that I cannot get an image of and I believe is possible for something to get snagged up in. That is where both jugs are! We began to run sonar down stream to only find that the Mississippi River beat us once again. We hit a wing dam with the sonar and broke a $400. wing off. That ended our day a bit earlier than I had hoped.
