What water level is wade-able

[Haris122]

Was wondering if anyone knew what water level is still wadeable at Huzzah/Courtois creeks, specifically around Huzzah Conservation Area. I see the gauge for the Huzzah at Steelville/Hwy8, but that's the closest to the conservation area I can find, and like said, it's restricted to just the Huzzah. That being said, the level for that gauge shows it's at 5 feet and most likely slowly dropping, while discharge is at 700 cfs and most likely dropping as well. At the same time I don't know how accurate that is since it doesn't seem to suggest it rained at all around there, the past few days, judging by the graph showing the levels of precipitation being 0 ever since May 12, and yet I'm pretty sure the recent storms passed over them to some degree. If I take those readings at face value, would it be wadeable, and if not, what water levels and discharge rates would be wadeable?     

[Eric82]

i stopped by there briefly last saturday and cfs was about 475 and 4.40ish on level. was too high and fast for me. walked around about 10 min and left...

[Al Agnew]

The gauge may not be all that accurate right now.  CWC told me that the creek bottom around the gauge got all washed out and probably changed the "normal" gauge level, which means cfs would not be right, either.  It will probably have to be recalibrated, and I don't know whether that's been done yet or not.

IF it was accurate, my rule of thumb on creeks of that size is the same as the Current below Montauk...anything under 200 cfs should be wadeable without much trouble, anything over 300 cfs is getting close to bein unwadeable.  200-300 cfs, you're on your own.  If you're a big guy with good balance, you can wade stronger current than a little guy can.

[Haris122]

Cool, thanks guys. I'll be skipping the wading for now then. Got to think of a plan B.

[Haris122]

I went to check out Huzzah conservation area yesterday. First I checked out huzzah past the courtois/huzzah confluence on cave road. Water looked pretty high and fast, so I decided to check out another spot. I went past the shooting range and drove down that road to the courtois creek where the water looked a little better. It was still kind of high and fast, but better than the huzzah further downstream. That's about as good as it got. I didn't get any bites, and didn't see any fish except for a few minnows, and some small one that kept leaping out of the water on occasion. However I was there with my gf, and she didn't want me to just disappear far up or downstream in search of fish, while leaving her there on the bank to herself, so I didn't really explore much of it. Hopefully sometime soon the water level will be just right, and I find the time to head down there and explore it in depth then.