The selfish side of me is a bit bummed. The river I fished 100+ days last year, is blown out. And I mean real blown out. Flows in the winter here are around 30 cfs, and in the summer they bump them up to around 200cfs. Well last week due to a high level of late winter, and early spring precipitation in the watershed that feeds the reservoir behind the dam they started the big dump. It was stepped up somewhat gradually, but on this last Saturday the reservoir spilled over the glory hole and flows bumped to over 10,000 cfs. It appears that flows will be high for a while as the bulk of the snow melt still has yet to occur. So it looks like I will be tying a lot of flies over the next couple months. There is that side of me that is not happy about the situation, but although I have no knowledge about how this is actually going to affect this fishery, I do tend to have an optimistic approach to the situation.
So what is the good news?
- These fish will finally have a bit of a break from angler pressure. This is a short river that is open to fishing and normally is at wadeable flows 365 days a year. Smaller rivers with a lot of 20+ inch Brown Trout don't stay secret for very long in todays environment. These poor fish are hammered by fishermen day after day, and now for the first time in a while they will be spared this constant barrage. If they can find good holding water, and there is still plenty of it, the fish will be fine and may actually end up being healthier in the long run.
- The river will be different. Yes that can be a good thing. Especially for a guy that fishes it as often as I do. Not saying at all that I had the river figured out, but when you fish it as often as I have the last couple years, there can't help but develop a sense of familiarity. I tend to look at it from the angle that now I will have the opportunity to relearn a river and go through the process all over again, like reacquainting yourself with an old, long lost friend.
In the mean time, I will be behind the vise stocking up the fly box.
Here are a couple pictures of the river. These will mean a lot more to those that have been there and are familiar with it at lower flows.
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| Just above the hot springs looking back down the river |
OK now let's take an eye test. The first picture was taken yesterday. The second picture was taken last year at about this time.
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| This year |
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| Same spot last year |
If you can't spot the difference, it's official...you need glasses, or maybe a new prescription.
More miscellaneous pictures:
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| At normal flows the tip of the rock you can see a little down and right of the center of the picture is the largest and one of several large boulders that stick out of the water a good distance, making a nice little rock garden. Not right now. |
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| What is normally a narrow channel is now a wide flat river. |
6 comments:
Wow! I've seen high watermarks on that river before and wondered when it ever rose that high... I guess this is proof it does get up there. What did it look like just after the tunnel at that big eddy?
It's a real big eddy now. The bank is pretty high there so other than being a lot higher the river doesn't look so dramatic there. The places your really notice it are where the river has room to spread out and places that were made up of a couple channels with an island or two are now one big mass of water, and no islands. Except for the tips of some willows sticking up of course.
When they lower the water again you could always go up and pick crappies off the trees like apples.
It's a bitter pill to swallow. And it will be strange this year not being up there for the month of April, and possibly most of May? We'll see how long they need to keep it at high flow to prevent major flooding.
Guess we should count our blessings and thank God that there will be no shortage of water for irrigation and boating this year.
I won't lie, I may get a little cranky if I don't do any fishing for a couple months. :)
Good stuff. I slid in to take a peek yesterday myself. Did not see all the dead fish like last time, did you? I have some video from the event in 06 (i think that was the year) when it's up at 12k. Really interesting stuff, hope it drops back into "shape" for us all soon!
bh
I have not seen any dead fish yet. I wonder what we will see when the water drops again, but so far I haven't seen anything like that. I just started fishing the river again in the late summer of 2006 so I didn't have a good frame of reference for the before picture of the river that year.
Yesterday my father in law and I actually took the drift boat and floated it from where the cable goes across the river just downstream from where the bridge used to be to go across to the little campground up under the dam, and we floated to the lower bridge. We just wanted to get a look at the river from the inside out and really, despite high flows there is a lot of good water for fish to hold as long as they don't get left high and dry if we get a sudden drop in flows. Didn't see a single dead fish, but we chucked streamers and didn't get a single strike either. We saw two fish rise on the float. They were single rises and we watched the area for quite a while and never saw them show again, but I took it as a good sign that the fish are settling into the flows and doing just fine.
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