Flooding

[smbass43]

These are spectacular pictures taken by Brian from the Hwy 19 bridge!

[Brian Sloss]

Went to Greer, Turner and Riverton today to check the damage. At Greer, the camper that was left there was put back upright and the campers were gathering their stuff. Saw two decent dead bass in the campground and a 20 inch or so pickerel by the boat ramp. I imagine there are some dead fish in the woods all along the river, but nothing the river can't take. Turner south is still covered up, but the water line indicates it covered all but the roof of the outhouse and that is on high ground. Riverton is still covered except the big parking lot away from the river. Went to the Spring river yesterday, there were dead blue gill in the lot at lassiter. Dam 3 area looked to have been damaged as they were doing work on the hatchery (probably cleaning up). I'll bet they lost some fish. Talked to some guys who found a dead brown trout of about 5lbs caught up in some netting, probably from the hatchery. Hoping the river might be doable a week from Sat., but who knows. It will probably be colored up for a while though.

JD, you are probably right that in the long run this will be good for the river, it probably flushed a lot of debri out. Hope no dangerous log jams were formed though.

[jdmidwest]

Back in the good ole days, you would see floods like this every other year. Not quite as big as this one, but ones that would go over the roads. It would move stuff around and change channels. The last 5 years, it has been really dry and no big floods. Fishing has not been as good as it used to be. And the walleye have all but disappeared in the past few years and this may help them.

[snap]

a few questions....how would this help the walleye?...and, what happens to the fish, especially trout, during a fast high rise of water like this??? do they bunker down or do they take a ride down river ???

[jdmidwest]

Scour out the deeper holes and create new structures for the walleye to hang out in. Something has been missing the last few years and the biologist has been trying to figure it out. 11 pt has always been a great place to catch a nice walleye, then they crashed. I don't really know if it will help, but consistant flooding will help the stream return to normal patterns of 15-20 years ago.

Fish will stay put and hold in breaks in the current or migrate around, probably upstream. Smaller ones will wash down. Some will die.