Lir Rise/fall Chart(S)

[Aarobyn]

Maybe I'm not searching correctly (could happen I suppose), but I can't find on the forum or the internet any sort of chart for the LIR that says when X generators are running that it takes Y minutes/hours for the water to reach location Z.

I've seen and used charts like that on other tailwaters and while they aren't a substitute for good sense, that information plus a generation schedule is great to have in hand before planning a trip.

The charts I've seen for other tailwaters also go in reverse, letting you know how long you usually have to wait after the generators stop for the water to drop.

Is such a chart out there for the LIR? If not, could those of you with more experience on the LIR construct one in the post comments?

Thanks,

- Aaron Weast

[budman]

Go to USGS.gov and click on oklahoma and then look for real time stream data. It will display the state of Ok and put your cursor on the dot until you find Lower Ill. at Gore. Double click on that dot and when the next page come up at the top of the page click on the dot that says charts. This will bring up a page showing the stream flow, height and temp every thirty minutes for the last week, or more if you want. The guage is about 1 1/2 miles downstream from the dam and you can figur out how long it take for the water to go down. You can check the generation by going to Tenkiller generation and this will give you the generation times. You can can check this each day at 5 pm. Hope this helps.

[dgames]

It seems to take about 30 minutes for the water to come up at the lower end of Watts. My experience is that you can hear the horn there. It seems like they sound the horn once as a warning that they will be starting up. About 5 minutes later, they will repeatedly blast the horn for what seems like several minutes. I think this is when they are actually starting up. From this point, I make sure I am on the same side of the river as my car and in a place where I know I can escape when the water comes up. Once I am in a safe location, I usually can fish about 30 minutes before the high water reaches me. Once it does, it only takes a minute or two before it is really rocking and rolling along.

I would guess that Marval might be another 20-30 minutes downstream from Watts, but I don't have any experience to verify that.

Bottom line, the entire tailwater is pretty short (similar to Norfork in length) and the entire length of it would probably be high within an hour of the start of generation. Best to stay on the safe side and make sure you are in a spot that you can escape once generation has started.

[dgames]

Another piece of info, I think most of the times I have fished Watts when they started up units, they started with a single unit. If they immediately start with 2 units, I am sure the water would reach me faster. Since you don't know what how many they are starting, I am pretty much continually watching for the first signs and sounds of rising water after the horns sound.