Fishing Is Tough

[DoveTail]

What a shame the fish are dead on the bottom. What a waste.

[Fishhand]

There also seemed to be a distinct smell at the river on Saturday. The smell was not a constant, but, there were definitely times I could smell something kind of "phosphorusy". The smell reminded me of the odor that emanated at the Norfork tailwater from a couple years back, kind of like rotten eggs.

[bigredbirdfan]

What has the generation pattern been last couple of days? Is there anywhere mobile to obtain amount levels of flow in addition to just numbers of units (which seems to be worthless at least to me)?

[Jeremy Hunt]

Actually the smell is very distinct on Norfork right now.

[DoveTail]

Some think of that egg smell coming from sulfur, could be from fertilizers washing down. I'm sure plenty of corn and soybean fields washed a lot into the river systems.

[Greg]

I noticed that smell on Sunday too. I wondered what it was. It was definitely unpleasant and I've never smelled it at Taney before.

Greg

[Fishhand]

Actually the smell is very distinct on Norfork right now.

When I first smelled it at Norfork, I heard the smell was from decomposing algae and the rotten egg smell was the byproduct of that process. I could never find out though if the smell was coming from the lake water through the turbines or if it was coming from the algae in the tailwater. Any idears?

[zsmith62]

If the smell was near the outlets, it could possibly be from them flushing out the hatchery. From what I can tell, they did this at least once a day during the summer. When this happens the water coming from the outlets turns to an almost tea color, and there are usually some chunks of moss and weeds along with some dead fingerling rainbows. The smell is not pleasant.