Sapphire Ring recovered in Wisconsin Lake

A few weeks ago, I traveled with Jeff Wettstein to a lake near Fremont to search jointly for a lost ring set. (Jeff and I are both ringfinders for Northeast Wisconsin.) Luckily, third time was a charm. We had the husband in a kayak directing us where to put the grid and dive, so we ended up a little further out. Also, I used my old Fisher 1280, which is quite sensitive. I had done some repairs on the handle, so it was ready. The last time, I was under 8-10 feet of water for two 3-hour sessions. This time, I was under for only 2 1/2 hours, and finally teased out a signal. The ring had settled on hardpan, which was underneath three layers: a seaweed carpet about four inches thick, over about four inches of silt, then about six inches of sand. My detector shaft kept getting caught up in weeds, so I had to use my arm as the shaft and hand sweep the coil underneath the weed layer in the silt, which kicked up in a cloud creating zero visibility and going by sound and feel. And, there was this big largemouth bass that kept playing with the coil like a cat after a toy. That was funny and made me laugh in my air regulator! (I didn’t know I could laugh underwater.) Finally, success! My fingertips felt the two-ring set among some pebbles on the hardpan! We had searched for 19 1/2 hours total.