Confluence Of The Huzzah And Meramec

[Al Agnew]

Well, since I'm the ultimate "river geek", I find such things infinitely interesting. I love studying river dynamics, and trying to understand not only how things change, but WHY they change.

Case in point...there's a spot on the lower Huzzah where I caught a lot of big smallmouth for a few years. It was a nice pool with rocks on one side, and deep enough water around the rocks to hold good fish. Then it started to shallow in, and within two years, it was basically barren, shallow, gravel-filled water. It had been stable for a long time, so why the change all of a sudden? Well, I realized that the change coincided with gravel dredging a quarter mile upstream. There was a sharp bend there with a big, parially willow-covered gravel bar on the inside, then a narrow strip of higher, wooded bank, and the actual stream channel was on the other side of the wooded bank and was narrow and fast. Somebody decided to dig up that gravel bar. They didn't dig it deep, they just skimmed off the top. But immediately, the channel there shifted to where about half the water was going over the former gravel bar, and my formerly good pool, the next good pool downstream, filled in. Digging up that gravel bar destabilized it, and the gravel that wasn't dug was picked up by consequent floods, and deposited in that downstream pool.

Another interesting story (to me, anyway)...On upper Big River, there was a long, deep, rocky pool. It was there for many years and didn't change at all. Then, one spring after the water had gone down after a big flood, I was floating that section and came to that pool. Something was weird. It was unchanged, except the water level had dropped about 18 inches from the normal level before. You could see the former normal waterline clearly. What the heck caused it? When I got to the riffle at the bottom of it, I saw. The riffle had formerly been wide, shallow, and gravelly, and had dropped significantly into the next pool. Now there was a narrow, deeper chute, the former riffle bottom was high and dry, and the chute just smoothed imperceptibly into the next pool. That submerged gravel bar had formed a dam, and the flood had cut a channel through the "dam", lowering the water level of the pool above.

One amazing thing to me as well is what DOESN'T change. There are a couple of logs on upper Big River that have been there ever since I was a kid, nearly 50 years ago. I've caught uncounted numbers of bass off those logs, and they are still there and still produce fish.

[cwc87]

My take on the changing of streams.

Our streams are wider from bank to bank = shallow holes.

When we get slow soaking rains it pushes the banks wider and fills in the holes.

When we get a real gully washer 3-6 inches in 8 hours r less it carves the holes out and throws gravel up on the banks.

These drought like years when we get rain all it does is fill every pond n lake up and it never makes it to the stream.

I am for gravel removal but only if done responsibly. It's unfortunate when gravel is mined and the best critter rocks are crushed when they could just haul them back to the mining site to create habitat.

I've seen Alot of change on streams and still can't figure out forsure how it happens.

[Haris122]

Interesting stuff for sure.

[Greasy B]

Potamology.

I find this discussion very interesting too. I spent some time looking satellite images of a stream section I am very familiar with. I was trying to find evidence of gravel movement and the gradual filling in of deep pools to back up what I think I’ve seen over several decades of floating. Unfortunately most of the images are either blurred or show such varying water levels it hard to tell what happened with any certainty. I suspect if I spent enough time looking at other stream sections I could find places where unstable river substrate resulted in a loss of equilibrium.

[405z06]

An interesting animation could be made from the channel change just upstream of Sappington Bridge. Google Earth images from 1995 to the most recent show the channel migrating to the north through a wooded gravel bar forming an island. Now the south channel is almost abandoned and will soon run dry.

more navel gazing

[Brian Jones]

I used to catch a lot of nice largemouths out of the "pond" that was off the old channel of the Huzzah, but it's been 8 or 9 years since I've been able to get to it.

Another change, this one for the better, was at the mouth of the slough pocket above the Meramec Caverns boat dock. When we first started fishing that section, it was almost completely silted in at the mouth and very shallow. Now there is about 5 feet of water at the mouth and there is fishable water all the way to the back of it.

We lost one of our best crappie spots on the Meramec last spring after that flash flood that we had in the middle of March piled a bunch of gravel in the mouth of it. Sure hated to see that happen.

We started fishing the Meramec seriously in 1999 and it is amazing the changes that have occurred in just the past 10 years or so.

[Gavin]

Think the Meramec moves around more than most rivers..Long drainage,Lots of tributaries, Frequent floods, fine gravel bottom, and the hard rock features seem to be spaced farther apart...Seems like its a different river after every high water event.

[Al Agnew]

Yeah, the Meramec seems to eat away more heavily wooded banks than most rivers. With thick woods, a bank should be pretty stable, but on the Meramec you'll see lots of places where these kinds of banks are being eroded with every flood. Back when I first started fishing the Meramec, though, that didn't seem to happen so often. It was only the banks where the landowner had cleared off all the timber that would erode. There's a bluff above Campbell Bridge, Hinch Bluff; back when I first started fishing that section, the river came down a fairly narrow channel and crashed into the upstream end of that bluff, with a deep, narrow pool beneath the whole length of the bluff. The bluff is on river right, and the channel above it curved very slightly to the left before curving to the right just before crashing perpendicularly into the bluff and making a very sharp left turn. The inside of the bend there was wooded, and for at least 15 years it remained pretty stable. But then the river started eroding the left bank on that slight curve before it hit the bluff. The channel very quickly started moving to the left, and a sandbar built up on the right as the channel migrated. It still hit the bluff perpendicularly, but where it hit the bluff kept moving downstream on the bluff, leaving a lengthening slough at the upstream end of the bluff. Now, the river hits the bluff about halfway down it, having migrated a good 100 yards over the last 25 years, eating away a high, timbered bank the whole way.

[moguy1973]

Yeah, the Meramec seems to eat away more heavily wooded banks than most rivers. With thick woods, a bank should be pretty stable, but on the Meramec you'll see lots of places where these kinds of banks are being eroded with every flood. Back when I first started fishing the Meramec, though, that didn't seem to happen so often. It was only the banks where the landowner had cleared off all the timber that would erode. There's a bluff above Campbell Bridge, Hinch Bluff; back when I first started fishing that section, the river came down a fairly narrow channel and crashed into the upstream end of that bluff, with a deep, narrow pool beneath the whole length of the bluff. The bluff is on river right, and the channel above it curved very slightly to the left before curving to the right just before crashing perpendicularly into the bluff and making a very sharp left turn. The inside of the bend there was wooded, and for at least 15 years it remained pretty stable. But then the river started eroding the left bank on that slight curve before it hit the bluff. The channel very quickly started moving to the left, and a sandbar built up on the right as the channel migrated. It still hit the bluff perpendicularly, but where it hit the bluff kept moving downstream on the bluff, leaving a lengthening slough at the upstream end of the bluff. Now, the river hits the bluff about halfway down it, having migrated a good 100 yards over the last 25 years, eating away a high, timbered bank the whole way.

Cough cough...Jet boats...Cough Cough...

Oops, I didn't say that...

[Al Agnew]

Cough cough...Jet boats...Cough Cough...

Oops, I didn't say that...

Nah, just coincidence that it all started about the same time they got popular.