CFS vs Gauge Height Debate

[Riverpig6]

Those are all good options.  I would recommend picking 3 floats on differnt streams.  Wait and see what water levels look like on the USGS and pick the one with the best water conditions.  Many of the streams rise, fall, and clear up at different rates.  Personally I like the stream to have a little stain to the water in early spring.  Big smallies are feeding heavily after the winter and can easily be spooked in clear water.  

[Gavin]

Up a foot from low and Milky is usually great in the Spring. The Current can produce some big Smallies, but not as consistent as the Meramec or Gasconade drainages. James drainage s/b good too but have never fished it. The Meramec and Gasconade drainages are on the way. Plus the Black, St Francis, Current, Eleven Point, Castor, Whitewater. 

[Mitch f]

March is kind of the transition month for smallmouth in Missouri. They are scattered and moving.

[fishinwrench]

45 minutes ago, Mitch f said:

March is kind of the transition month for smallmouth in Missouri. They are scattered and moving.

Yeah I was on the verge of spilling some extremely helpful late Winter/early Spring river smallmouth knowledge, but then it hit me....I don't fish for river smallies in late winter-early spring EVER, I'm always busy chasing something else then.  My window of serious river smallie fishing typically begins when the water first becomes warm enough to wet wade in, and ends when it becomes unbearable to wet wade in.  

[Mitch f]

46 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

Yeah I was on the verge of spilling some extremely helpful late Winter/early Spring river smallmouth knowledge, but then it hit me....I don't fish for river smallies in late winter-early spring EVER, I'm always busy chasing something else then.  My window of serious river smallie fishing typically begins when the water first becomes warm enough to wet wade in, and ends when it becomes unbearable to wet wade in.  

The best way to judge is when you can’t catch fish in your favorite spring hole anymore! 😂

[Al Agnew]

On 1/17/2020 at 8:36 PM, MidwestfishMick said:

That's actually helpful, thanks! I've got it bookmarked now and probably will be checking it weekly.

Just one thing I'd change or clarify from tjm's advice...look at the median flow, not the mean flow, to get an approximation of what is normal flow for that particular time is.  

For an indepth tutorial of how to get the most from the USGS real time river gauges, you can check out my three part article on the subject in my new blog.  Just go to: 

riversandart.blogspot.com

You'll find the three parts under August, 2019.

[fishinwrench]

Everybody always talks CFS in regards to river/stream conditions, and I get that if you've never seen the river before and are clueless to its relative size.  But for the rivers I fish and already am familiar with, guage level in feet is what I want to know.  With lowest flows always being between 1-2 ft. it is way easier for me to know at a glance what it's going to be like when I get there. Checking/monitoring stream flow in CFS does nothing but confuse me.   

[tjm]

 In any gauge, the gauge height  is the measure of discharge rate, so in essence they tell the same thing. Trouble is that not all streams are created equal- one might be 3' wide and another might be 300' wide, width x height  are the limiting factors to how much volume can pass in given time. So, a 6" difference in height might   be a slight increase on one stream or it might be a major increase on another stream. The USGS keeps data on the discharge column in CFS for many years and the median flow in CFS is recorded on their graphs so that it is easy to compare with the recent instantaneous value. Because over time width of the stream or the flow speed may change, they don't report historical gauge data, so there is no way to guess how current gauge height relates to "normal"  from 2 or 10 years ago. 

It's not so much the current reading of CFS that is important to me , it is how that compares to historical readings that tell me if the river is out it's banks.

[MidwestfishMick]

Great info guys. Are there any resources online to check water temperature for these rivers too?

[fishinwrench]

11 hours ago, tjm said:

So, a 6" difference in height might   be a slight increase on one stream or it might be a major increase on another stream.

I just don't compute it that way.  6" is 6" regardless of whether the stream is 10 feet across, or 1/2 mile across.