Blown out!

[BrianK]

Hope no one was out on the river today.

She came up (and still rising this afternoon) 10 feet in just a few hrs according to the Windyville gauge!

Should be good to keep flows up thru the rest of the summer.

I'm sure a few folks have witnessed a flash flood. I hadn't until

a few yrs ago when a buddy and I went to fish Warm Fk of Spring river near Koshkonong, MO.

We new it was rising and as we stood at a low water slab, we watched the water come up about 5-6 feet in 15 minutes. Went from clear to muddy torrent. It wasn't a 'wall of water' but pretty darn fast. I happened to get it on video.

Scary to think of camping when that happens.

Anyone ever have to really scramble to high ground in the middle of the night?

I've heard to tie a rope to you and the other end to a life vest and leave it near the river. If the water comes up, it'll pull and wake you up. Never have had to do it.

I'm sure there are some horror stories out there......

bk

[Phil Lilley]

I heard they closed highway 13 north fo Springfield... some areas got 11 inches of rain. Bad stuff.

[BrianK]

yeah, after i posted above i checked the usgs gauges on some of the other streams in that area. a couple showed flash floods of 20-25 feet today!

Tiny little streams (Turnback Ck and Little Sac) that went from 3 feet to 26 ft in just a couple hrs. crazy.

All that water will again pour into the Osage basin- Stockton, Truman, LOZ....

[Al Agnew]

Worst flash flood I was ever in was on Beaver Creek. Luckily, it was the last day of the three day float, and we were about 6 miles above Kissee Mills when the rain hit us. It had come up from the south, so the creek was no affected for a while. But it was the hardest rain I've ever been in...we kept fishing through it, but it was raining so hard you literally couldn't see where your lure hit the water on an average cast. The fishing throughout was excellent. After 15 minutes of rain like this, the little ravines coming off the hillsides were gushing torrents of water, and it rained nearly that hard for over an hour. The storm, which had almost no lightning, moved on up the river, but by that time the stream was getting muddy, so we started paddling. In an hour we reached Kissee Mills, and the creek had come up a foot or two. But we parked the canoe, and in the time it took to walk the 100 yards or so to the vehicle and bring it back to the water, the creek came up 6 feet and nearly floated the canoe away! We barely got it loaded before the parking lot went under.

[fishinwrench]

It really kicked Bennett Spring in the butt. Dead Rainbows literally covered the ground downstream of the hatchery yesterday.... it was starting to reek, and the buzzards were waiting anxiously for the parking lots to clear out.

Bennett lost a lot of fish. That blast of warm water was lethal I guess.

What if something like that happened on Crane? Trout in a small stream like that wouldn't have a chance, all the McClouds would be lost.

I didn't see any dead Browns though, hopefully they lived through it.

[Morgan F.]

Fishinwrench,

Were most of the effected fish from the hatchery or were they fish that had already been realeased into the stream/sping? i.e. will the impact be effective now or in the future concerning the number of fish in the spring?

Morgan F.

[fishinwrench]

Morgan, We fished Bennett today for about 4 hours. Zone 1 noticably lacks the numbers it had previously, but I think most of the bigger Browns are all still there. Zone 2 from the hatchery outlet down to the whistle bridge is absolutely full of fish (mostly small) so I'm guessing that alot of them were washed out of the rearing pools, into that section.

The "mess" (dead rainbows) has been cleaned up, and the hatchery crew appears to be hard at it, sorting fish and cleaning out the tanks. There's not much "talk" about the "loss" in the local shops....which I find unusual.

[brownieman]

wrench,

does sound unusual...imo about par for the course...do you reckon it's a 'gentlemens agreement' of sorts ?

[fishinwrench]

Dunno, they tend to be treating it like "no biggie", and maybe it isn't.

But it was certainly more dead fish than I had ever seen before....and hopefully never will again.

I Don't think there was anything anyone could have done to prevent it. Just one of those unfortunate things. I assume they will haul in more fish from SOH soon. I'm a bit concerned about the size of fish that will be in the stream during winter C&R....Hope it's not just a bunch of 11" dinks that look like they came from the same mold.....like it was in 03 or 04 (whichever).

[BrianK]

so was the spring branch all the way up into the hatchery pools???

sounds like quite a mess..

Looking forward to getting back on the Niangua in the next month or so.

I wonder if there will be more trout in the upper Niangua now??

Hey Al-

yeah, it's hard to believe until you see all the water for yourself.

Good thing it wasn't a day earlier.

I can only imagine being on some remote stretch of Current, Jacks or Eleven Pt and having that happen at 2am!!!Kind of everyone's worst nitemare when camped on the river.

Grab what you can and leave the rest of your gear to wash away then spend a cold wet nite in the middle of nowhere. sounds like a memorable trip. I'm sure it's happened to someone on here??????

bk