Jet Boat on the North Fork or Big Piney

[jdmidwest]

Have a 4 day weekend coming up, trip to Dale Hollow postponed till later in fall. Going to 11 PT and thinking about Gainesville area. Anyone run the North Fork in a light jet?  Thinking about Houston area and Big Piney also, have not been there in a long time. 

[Al Agnew]

Jet boats can probably run the North Fork up to at least Dawt Mill.  Maybe above there, but there are a few rocky rapids and the low falls that would stop them, and normally this time of year it's low enough that you better really know what you're doing.  Just saw on the gauge at Tecumseh that it's flowing a bit higher than normal at 559 cfs.  I kinda figure that 500 cfs is a good cut-off point for running a jet on water you don't know very well.

I wouldn't run a jet on the Big Piney anywhere above the lower end of Fort Wood.

 

[Gavin]

Your not gonna do well on the NFoW  at present level. Talk to Justin, & Scott A. Scott A can run over the falls if it rolling but it is not. Some big striped  bass in that creek. Please kill them.

 

[jdmidwest]

21 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

I wouldn't run a jet on the Big Piney anywhere above the lower end of Fort Wood.

 

I always wondered that, but in the fall when staying in Licking, there were gigging rigs going somewhere out that direction in droves.  I always figured they were going after the suckers on the Piney.  They may be running up farther.  They would all heading west out of Licking in jets of an evening.

[jdmidwest]

20 hours ago, Gavin said:

Your not gonna do well on the NFoW  at present level. Talk to Justin, & Scott A. Scott A can run over the falls if it rolling but it is not. Some big striped  bass in that creek. Please kill them.

 

Was thinking about putting in at Tecumseh and running up.  May just take yaks over and do some floating.  There is a float on the upper Jack's I have been wanting to do, plenty of water in the area this fall.

[Al Agnew]

2 hours ago, jdmidwest said:

Was thinking about putting in at Tecumseh and running up.  May just take yaks over and do some floating.  There is a float on the upper Jack's I have been wanting to do, plenty of water in the area this fall.

Upper Jacks Fork is slightly above normal for this time of year, but still doesn't have enough water to make it anything but a scrape bottom in every riffle deal.  Just looked at the gauge and it's flowing 43 cfs at Buck Hollow.  You need 75 cfs to have a chance to float most of the riffles without scarring up your boat bottom.  It looks a little better at Alley--the gauge there is just above the spring and it's showing 106 cfs, which theoretically should be enough water to float from Bay Creek to Alley, but that stretch has gotten to where it has a lot of 50 yard wide, one inch deep riffles.

[top_dollar]

On 9/6/2020 at 10:38 PM, Gavin said:

 Some big striped  bass in that creek. Please kill them.

 

How come?  I believe I will be floating to Dawt mill in early november.

[Gavin]

The stripers will eat trout. Plus they are delicious.

[fishinwrench]

1 hour ago, Gavin said:

The stripers will eat trout. Plus they are delicious.

I think it's time for this biologist generated misunderstanding to be shutdown, or at least brought back down to a more reasonable level.  Stripers won't necessarily hunt down and gobble up individual trout.  They key on schools of baitfish, and on some lakes they dump truckloads of stocker Rainbows.  When they do that the rainbows stay together in a school....and yes stripers will corral them and feed on them, because they are acting just like a school of pretty shad or herring.  

From that, brilliant biologists have deducted that Stripers eat Trout.   Not really.  Stripers feed on anything that acts like a school of baitfish, and when trout do it they are no exception. 

It's unlikely to find a school of wild stream born trout in an area where stripers can get under them and blitz feed.  It's also unlikely to find a lone trout just hovering near the surface or in mid-water column.  A lone trout nymphing along the bottom, or in a tiny eddy mid-riffle is not likely to get gobbled up by a striper. 

So there's no justifiable reason to promote the slaughter of all the NFOW stripers. 

[gotmuddy]

At the current flow it would be suicide to try a jet boat on the NFoW.  I would kayak if it were me. The stripers are bad because they gorge on crawfish, not trout.  I would fish them out because they are another invasive species.