Anybody With Experience Water Bottle Hunting?

bottlehunterofcoscob

bottlehunterofcoscob

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Dec 25, 2012
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Southern CT
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My grandparents had a lake house in the Finger Lakes Region of upstate New York that I'm taking care of now. A little history about the area, the town was founded in 1789, it's one of those smaller towns with a nice main st with all early to late 19th century buildings and houses, loads of history. The lake was used as shipping waters with steam boats and experienced a lot of activity. So besides trying to find dumps and privies on land, does anyone know some good places to search in a lake? I've heard that there was dumping going on at the city pier, but were there any other places people would often dump on a body of water? Also, with properties on the shore near the water, would people dump directly into the water from shore, or go out in a boat and dump further away? I don't scuba dive but do snorkel a lot and have found shards here and there near shore. I'm willing try anything and any info on snorkeling for bottles would help. Thanks guys!
 

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I've built bridges for 30 years, and they were often a place where people tossed trash. I have found some nice bottles over the years.

Dug up a lock box once, still locked, couldn't wait to pop it open, it was full of bus keys, and had some soggy school lunch menus inside. Big disappointment.
 

I lived on a lake up state for years. Friends lake n.y. my experience was behind boat houses , along the side of the road going to the lake, and maybe just maybe under a peer . most people did not us there lake for a dump. You what'd the water clean for swimming and fishing. now maybe a boater or fisherman would throw a occasional beer or soda out of the boat , but unless it floated to shore you may have to dive for it.
 

Maybe DiverDave will chime in and give you some pointers

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Anybody With Experience Water Bottle Hunting?
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Yes. I've been at it for some time.
 

Hey there Bottle hunter, Bass Assassin gave me a heads up that you were looking to do a little bottle diving or at least bottle snorkling. If you can get your hands on some old maps of the area and find out where the old piers were would be a good start. I head for the achorages but if your not diving they wont help you out. Next to that I would walk the shores keeping a sharp eye out for broken glass. Land owners that lived by the shore would often just through their trash over the bank onto the shore and let the sea or lake take care of it. any goodies that were sitting on the shore would have been picked up long ago but the ones just under the surface would most likely still be there but not in the surf zone. Also look up on the banks when you find glass on the shore, there could be a good bottle dump close by. We have found some nice bottles sticking out of the sand in the bank.
Also look up the tributaries, they were ofton used as dump sites.
Good luck and I hope this helps you out.
ZDD
 

Diver Dave, thanks a lot for your help, I will definitely have some spots to check out now. What you said about tossing bottles on shore makes a lot of sense now because I've seen so many shards in the water, probably washed in years ago, but no whole bottles in areas where the shore has been developed. Anyway, thanks for all your help, appreciate it! And thanks, Bass, for letting Dave know about the thread.
 

Hi Bottle-Hunter... Sounds like an interesting place. ZodiakDiverDave had some good advice. Get old, old maps from around the late 1800's. Look for the steamship docks, old pilings, old camp sites, old hotels. They threw their trash in the water off the dock mostly. The water was deeper, they were not concerned about trash like we are today. Most of the contents of the bottles, were probably gone, so empty bottles were not thought of as being dangerous or killing the fish. In the winter time, some hotels, families, piled their trash on the ice, so that the trash would fall into deeper water when the ice melted in the spring, so again, you are talking about water that may be out of your snorkeling range. Anyway, sounds like a good bet that you will probably find some glass. Good luck.
Wayne:icon_thumleft:
 

That's interesting about putting trash on the ice, makes sense though. Anyway, thank you to everyone who's helped out, I certainly have work to do but hopefully it'll pay off. Already found a broken hand blown crown top and other shards near an island that was used for picnicking, could be hit or miss there but I have other spots to look for now. Thanks!
 

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