Detecting Shorty Hooks Place

One of my favorite fishing spots when I was a kid was Pine Lake. This lake was completely private, as it is now, with no public boat launches. I had an aunt that lived on the lake and if I was real good she let me use her rowboat. The lake was great for bass fishing and in the spring I speared carp in the swamp at the west end.

Right next to my Aunts home was a Boat Livery called Shorty Hooks Place. It was a boat livery and he had a few cabins to rent out and a swimming area. It cost a buck or two to swim there and there was no way I could afford that back in the mid fifties.

Shorty was a local character. He was a sawed off little runt and if he got in the cups he would fight anyone or anything. He had been barred from most of the local bars but he managed to find somewhere to get drunk. He was a wirey little sucker, as I remember and he was always good to me. I would sell him night crawlers and crickets in the summer. It was Shorty that bought the crawlers by the pound from me. I thought he was trying to cheat me but he said there were a hundred in a pound. I didn't believe the sucker so I counted them out to check. Right on, one hundred to a pound or within one or two.

If you stood on the shore and looked lake ward there were two docks. The one on the right was the one he had his rentals tied up to and the one on the left was the swimming dock. On the end of the dock there was a diving board, about six feet off the water.

If you stood on the diving dock the weed bed was only about 10 or 12 ft out. In other words, if you made a long shallow dive you would end up in the weeds. The water there was about 20 ft deep. Now I never swam there but I used to fish it a lot from my aunts boat. I hooked the biggest bass I ever saw between those two docks, fought it for a while and it broke my line right at the boat. Since I lost it it was a 39 pound large mouth bass! A mite smaller if I had caught it :D

Between the two docks it was all sand. I don't know if the little bastud had it trucked in back in the twenty's or not. Shorty was a friend of my parents and he had the place from back in the 20's, maybe earlier, I don't know. I was 12 or 13 at the time.

Many years later and long after Shorty had died, the old building was still there. The docks were gone and the building was just used for storage. It is a small building, about 10 by maybe 15 ft. He didn't need much to rent boats and sell bait. Where his house was and the cabins were was just a vacant lot now.

I would drive past his old place occasionally and I would always wonder if there was anything there to find. I had never seen anyone there of course and it was private now. The old shack had been dressed up a bit but I never saw anyone around.

One day I stopped across the street and walked across the street to the old building, all the time thinking someone was gonna confront me for trespassing. There were no signs but what the heck, someone owned it!

I walked down to the lake and looked it over, trying to remember how it was laid out. Heck, it looked good. I had never dove the area and the thought of diving where I lost the big 55 lb bass excited me. You know, the bass I lost. I could tell how much it weighed by its SCALES :D:D:D

A few days later I loaded my Hookah and detector, along with the rest of my diving gear and headed for the lake, fulling expecting someone to kick my trespassing arse out. The site was right on the main highway so I would be seen. I would have been happy to ask permission but had no clue who owned it anyway.

I parked in the vacant lot and started lugging my gear across the road and down the small hill to the water. The day was just perfect, nice and cool and very calm. It seems it was in the fall, which is my favorite time to be detecting with scuba. The water is still warm but the activity on the lake has let up.

I geared up and waded out a ways. As I said, the beach was still all sand but both sides of the sand area was real mucky. It was sandy under the swimming dock but the boat dock was another matter. The water was only about three or four ft at the boat dock but if I stood there I was soon in the sticky muck to my knees. With fins on it was hard to move.
It was rather weedy there but I like to check the boat docks for tools.

I waded over to the sand and dropped to the bottom and started my sweeps. There were coins all over the place. It had not been hunted! At least the deeper water was loaded. I say deeper but there were coins all over the place in four feet of water. A wader could have easily hunted it if they had realized it was once a beach.

One thing about these glory holes I have found. I never hunt the shallow water. If I can not lay on the bottom and hunt, I leave it for others. I don't especially like wading and detecting so I just get the deeper stuff. There was plenty there. Not as much as Dodge Park on Cass Lake but still plenty.

I found lots of silver, along with clad but as usual I kept no records of what found. I made about five trips to Shorty's and do know I found 23 rings. For some reason I do remember the total number of rings on some sites. How many gold or silver I have no clue.

The beach was shallow for the first maybe sixty ft out but then dropped down at a 45 degree angle to the depths. It was all sand until I hit the weed bed then I could go no farther. The weed bed was only about 30 ft across but nobody much swam on the deeper side. I went over it and dropped down to the bottom, right where I hooked that 82 lb bass but it was all mucky.

On one of my dives I found an old pocket watch. I threw it in my pouch but didn't figure it was worth anything. When I got to shore I took it out and pried it open. What a mess. It was just a gob of rust. I pried the guts out and looking at the frame, which was gold plated, I just tossed it on a rock on shore.

The next year I decided to do another dive there. I had pretty much cleaned it out but I was bored it it was easy to get to. I carried my gear down and rigged up. After the dive I was walking out and saw that dang pocket watch body on the rock. It still was gold and shiny. What the heck. I picked up and looked it over. Dang thing was solid gold! Solid gold but thin. I took it home and tossed it in my goody box. I still have it somewhere.

It is just a guess but I had to have found at least fifty silver coins and a lot of clad. I found some old medals and dang I had almost forgotten, I found a police badge, State Police if I remember right. It was in great shape and you could tell by the way the pin was bent that it was pulled off a shirt. The story to that always puzzled me. I found it in the muck on the deep side of the weed bed, in about 20 or 25 ft of water if my memory serves me. I have a picture of that sucker somewhere.

I have not been back there for many years but when I go past I see it is still as I remember it. Across the street, where I parked, is all condo's now. There is no place to even park.

I hope this is of interest to you. This site needs a bit of waking up :D