Reels and lift-bags for the not so savvy

[kevsil]

i mostly do shore dives for fish, lobster old bottles and whatever other cool stuff i can find but hopefully this spring and summer want to do more diving off my kayak and possibly a friends boat., so id like to get a reel and maby a liftbag but not sure what kind of either to get ive been looking at kent tooling ratched and stAndard not ratcheting reels , any suggestions or reviews on a different type or brand.... as far as lift bagsim not sure on what style i want what i want to be able to do or what i have in my head that i would want to do with my lift bag is to shoot a bag up the reel line that ill have attached to the kaya/ boat full of whatever and load it into the boat or kayak instead of swimming with it..?? i dont know.. suggestions, tips anything haha

 

[herr2720]

I am in no way an expert, I only started when one day I floated by an item and thought "hey, that doesn't belong here, I think I'll recover it and sell it on eBay." Ended up learning by trial and error when in fact the first thing I should have done was take a course/workshop with a pool or open water session that allows you to work on item recovery.

 

[emoreira]

i mostly do shore dives for fish, lobster old bottles and whatever other cool stuff i can find but hopefully this spring and summer want to do more diving off my kayak and possibly a friends boat., so id like to get a reel and maby a liftbag but not sure what kind of either to get ive been looking at kent tooling ratched and stAndard not ratcheting reels , any suggestions or reviews on a different type or brand.... as far as lift bagsim not sure on what style i want what i want to be able to do or what i have in my head that i would want to do with my lift bag is to shoot a bag up the reel line that ill have attached to the kaya/ boat full of whatever and load it into the boat or kayak instead of swimming with it..?? i dont know.. suggestions, tips anything haha

Any certification agency has a "Search & Recovery" course, where they will teach you how to search for a missed object and how to retrieve it back to surface, with all the stuff you will need to do so. I did it and it's worth the time and money. Besides, check-out dives are fun and you will search and recover an object.

 

[herr2720]

For small/lightweight items I carry around a lobster bag and/or fill my thigh pockets on my drysuit. Works for bottles, golf balls, small tools. You can also clip the lobster bag to your lift bag for items that don't have good attachment points.

For filling a small lift bag I have a dedicated hose with an inflation tip on it that I keep clipped to my hip D-ring rather than trying to use my primary/octo to fill the bag.

 

[Steve_C]

Lobster bag? Regular or North Carolina size?

 

[Rich Keller]

The items you are considering lifting are relatively small so I would go with as small a bag as you can. 100lb lift bag or a large SMB should be more then enough. Carter, the lift bag company, makes SMBs that can lift as much as 75lbs so you would not need to carry both a lift bag and SMB. Personal Floats Safety Sausage Tubes I would go with something simple for a search line rather then a reel, something that uses a thicker, shorter line and has some weight built into it so you can rest it on the bottom as you go back down the line to see what you got snagged on. The easiest way to run a search pattern is off a fixed point on the bottom that you can attach your search line to and run a circular pattern. If you are searching for a small item that you need to see to find you can make one turn within visual range of your fixed point then let out some line and make another pass then repeat as needed. If the item is large enough that your search line will get hung up on it then I would let out about 25'-30' of line and make one pass keeping the line tight so you can feel when your line hits something. If you want to send a bag up a line you do not want that line attached to you but rather something on the bottom.

 

[kevsil]

The items you are considering lifting are relatively small so I would go with as small a bag as you can. 100lb lift bag or a large SMB should be more then enough. Carter, the lift bag company, makes SMBs that can lift as much as 75lbs so you would not need to carry both a lift bag and SMB. Personal Floats Safety Sausage Tubes I would go with something simple for a search line rather then a reel, something that uses a thicker, shorter line and has some weight built into it so you can rest it on the bottom as you go back down the line to see what you got snagged on. The easiest way to run a search pattern is off a fixed point on the bottom that you can attach your search line to and run a circular pattern. If you are searching for a small item that you need to see to find you can make one turn within visual range of your fixed point then let out some line and make another pass then repeat as needed. If the item is large enough that your search line will get hung up on it then I would let out about 25'-30' of line and make one pass keeping the line tight so you can feel when your line hits something. If you want to send a bag up a line you do not want that line attached to you but rather something on the bottom.

thanks thats pretty much the exact sort of response i was hoping to get, so then it might be a good thing to maby have 2 finger spools or something similar one for a search line and the other to send a bag up or is there a better method

 

[Rich Keller]

thanks thats pretty much the exact sort of response i was hoping to get, so then it might be a good thing to maby have 2 finger spools or something similar one for a search line and the other to send a bag up or is there a better method

If you are working off of a boat or kayak that is anchored it would be better and safer to sending the bag up the anchor line. If you try to send up a bag by unreeling a spool from the bottom you run the risk for the bag shooting to the surface too fast and taking you with it. Another option if you can get a line from the surface to the object would be to use a smaller bag then could lift the object on its own to offset most of the weight and then just pull it up from the surface. If you have a 50lb bag on a 60lb object you are only pulling up 10lbs until the top of the bag reaches the surface.

 

[kevsil]

If you are working off of a boat or kayak that is anchored it would be better and safer to sending the bag up the anchor line. If you try to send up a bag by unreeling a spool from the bottom you run the risk for the bag shooting to the surface too fast and taking you with it. Another option if you can get a line from the surface to the object would be to use a smaller bag then could lift the object on its own to offset most of the weight and then just pull it up from the surface. If you have a 50lb bag on a 60lb object you are only pulling up 10lbs until the top of the bag reaches the surface.

if the kayak was anchoroed and you were doin a seach pattern off the anchor how would you send your bag up the anchor line if say the item(s) were to heavy to swim back to the achor with?..... maby just fill the bag until neutral or just a touch positive and move it then?

 

[Rich Keller]

if the kayak was anchoroed and you were doin a seach pattern off the anchor how would you send your bag up the anchor line if say the item(s) were to heavy to swim back to the achor with?..... maby just fill the bag until neutral or just a touch positive and move it then?

If you are going to move the object to the anchor I would put enough air in the bag to offset most of the weight but still be slightly negative and then swim the object to the anchor. It would probably be easier though to just move the anchor to the object. The thing you want to avoid in any type of lift is getting too much air into the bag and have it take off to the surface too fast for you to compensate. This is the most common mistake most people make and is usually caused by underestimating the amount of lift needed to break the suction on an object that is partially buried. The object in this example is also a little larger then your first example and may now be too big for you to lift into the kayak once you get it to the surface. For something like this you should also get a paddle float so you can rig your paddle as an outrigger making the kayak stable enough to lift objects into the kayak.