Mineral Fork Levels?

[moguy1973]

Anyone fished the Mineral Fork lately? Seems like with the lack of rain it will be super low like everything else is but we were wanting to float Kingston to mammoth this weekend and was curious to how much dragging we'll be doing.

[Stoneroller]

it will be an absolute dragfest. and not the RuPaul kind. I would not advise doing that float. That's a bony creek in normal flows. I can't imagine what the half mile below kingston looks like now, it's usually barely over your ankles in the deepest spots once past that kink in the creek that creates the hole that people love to hang out at and leave dirty diapers and beer cans all over the shore.

[eric1978]

I hear the meth-heads are thick down there, too.

[Guest]

deleted

[Al Agnew]

Here's a rule of thumb...look at the Big River USGS gauges. The one at Irondale, of course, is far above the Mineral Fork, and the one at Richwoods is about seven miles below the Mineral Fork. As a general rule, in normal or low water conditions Mineral Fork will be putting in about 20-25% of the flow at Richwoods on Big River. Right now the Richwoods gauge reads 88 cfs, which means Mineral Fork is putting about 20 cfs into Big River. You need about 70 cfs in a creek like the Mineral Fork to make it floatable without a lot of dragging. Meaning that as that general rule of thumb, if Big River at Richwoods is flowing about 300 cfs or better, there's probably enough water in the Mineral Fork to make it floatable without a huge amount of dragging.

[moguy1973]

Good info there Al. Thanks!