I'll take quality over quantity any day

Lately, excitement has been building earlier and earlier in the week for the Saturday foray into the river. This week, it hit me about Tuesday. I've had an incredible run of luck lately, and my expectations are getting higher every time. Today was no exception. thA duDe and I were at the boat landing by 9:45, but we couldn't dive yet. We had a piece of business to attend to. You see, I recently bought a boat and it had to be christened (see the tools page for the low-down; I think its one of the funniest things I've ever done). 10:40 and we had the boat christened, packed, and launched. We went to the first place which was a new spot we've been dying to hit since the day we floated. Today the river was really high and the current was ripping! Within 25 minutes, we had both sucked our tanks to the bottom and hadn't found anything worthwhile. But right before we both decided to head off for the boat, we found the mother load of rocks. They were everywhere! The bed was massive! I wanted to hit it so bad, but the current was just too fearsome. We'll have to wait for some dryer weather to lower the river enough to make the current manageable. But when that day comes! OH BABY! We're gonna score. Instead of burning our other tank in that spot, we decided to go back to the spot with the whale. Its really become old faithful. Its a rock bed 200 feet long and 30 feet wide. The bottom is all hard marl, but there are rocks sticking up everywhere that are still stuck in the marl. There is gravel all between the rocks, and teeth get deposited there. On the upriver end of the spot, there is a big clam bed sitting right on top of the chandler bridge, and there are rocks all over the place in between the clams. The middle is all marl, and the down river side is piles of large gravel and sand. The whale I mentioned a few posts ago is in the middle. I've tried twice to take pictures, but both times, they havent turned out. Next time, I'm borrowing my dad's underwater camera with a flash so you can see how cool it looks. Today, I ran into about 6 vertebrae all together, probably only 5 feet from the pile of ribs. And there was a tooth sticking up out of the marl, too. It was a big incisor, but I accidentally hit it with my knife while I was digging it out and it turned to powder. BUMMER! I'll bet there are more of its teeth down there somewhere. Anyway, I spent over half of my dive taking pictures, but like I said, none of them turned out. I finally decided that I needed to get cracking if I wanted to have anything to show for the day, so I started swimming my search patterns. A tooth here, tooth there, but nothing great. Then, I moved into the area where the hard marl bottom was still covered with the Chandler Bridge. That's the stuff, man. Like 2 minutes after I got there, I saw a big tooth just peeking out from under a big boulder. I saw the tip and one edge. So far, so good, I thought. I carefully removed the tooth from under the rock and I saw it - yet another huge, killer angustidens. The root is perfect, the cusps are perfect, the tip is perfect, its nicely serrated. DUDE! I don't know what I did to deserve this kind of luck, but I'll take it as long as it lasts. About 10 minutes later, I heard thA duDe's signal, and I made my way to the bank. I picked up a few more teeth on the way, but nothing else special. I didn't find the quantity today, but oh! The quality! I'll take quality over quantity anyday! Monday I'm heading back out. da f0ssZ is coming down and we might hit this spot again as well as try to find a new spot. That would be cool - there are more killers just waiting for us, I'm certain! By the way, the dirt didn't work so well when I tried to clean the big tooth. I have noticed that the black coating flakes off for the most part after the tooth dries normally. Maybe next time I'll just have to wait for it. Its tough to wait to clean off the nice ones. I'll have to practice restraint.