Need Help With Water Level Graph

[DoctaJ]

Hey guys, just curious what the graph should read to be "normal" levels of the meremac. I wade down around the steelville area in cuba but I live an hour away and havn't got to see if I'm going to be able to fish the river. Anyone know the regular values or has seen the river in the area? Thanks!

[Al Agnew]

Simplest way to know what normal level is for this time of year is to look at the flow in cubic feet per second graph. The little triangles you see on that graph are the median flow for that particular day throughout all the years of record. Median means that half the time it was higher than that, half it was lower. So the median flow is a good approximation of normal. On the Steelville graph, median for today is 593 cfs, and the flow today is 1180 cfs. That's twice the normal flow. But in reality, it's less than a foot above normal for this time of year, because small rises in level will equal pretty large differences in flow rate.

Keep in mind, however, that springtime "normal" is a lot higher than summertime normal. In the summer, a normal flow would be somewhere around 250-300 cfs at Steelville. Wading at this time of year is problematical even at normal flows, and 1180 cfs is higher than I would want to wade. You won't be able to reach the good spots, and the current will be strong enough to be difficult and possibly dangerous.

[DoctaJ]

thanks, appreciate it....I have a small canoe avaliable to fish it if it's bad. Thanks for the help!

[bikehikefish]

Much more than 400 cfs at Steelville is higher than I like to wade. A few weeks back we were at Cardiac when the level was 2.5 ft, and could not wade across.