Fishing - Rapid River TR

On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 08:15:17 GMT, "Bob Weinberger"
wrote:

"Dave LaCourse" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:27:52 -0400, Dave LaCourse
wrote:

could not fish the river because of Biblical flood levels.

Dave

BTW in a great many instances, occasional extremely high flows can be very
therapeutic to river sections below a dam. On many rivers the moderation of
peaks and valleys in flow rates that many dams provide relative to undammed
conditions, can allow buildup of sediment in the stream below the dam and/or
prevent formation of historically normal features such as sand bars .

The key word in your statement is "occasional". I have no problem
with this if it is a necessary house-keeping step in the preservation
of the river. However, FPL does it frequently and for no reason.

A local river that supports a fabulous Brown trout fishery (not unusual to
catch double digit # of trout/day averaging 17-22" on dries) illustrates
this quite well.. The reservoir behind the dam is huge(60mi. long by up to
15 mi. wide), but it is strictly an irrigation reservoir - no power
generation. Between October and April the irrigation district historically
has maintained flows of from 10- 40 cfs and raised it to 200-300 cfs through
the irrigation season. Over the last ten or so years several insect
hatches, including the Skwala hatch for which the river was somewhat famous,
had all but disappeared due to sediment build up. As a result the quality of
the fishing was in decline.

The opposite seems to be happening on the Rapid. The Rapid is a very
small river. It is only a mile to Pond in the River, and about
another four miles until its terminus at Umbagog. Hatches have not
disappeared because of the 7000 cfs flows, but they have been
affected. The important Hendrickson hatch, one of the most prolific
in the late spring, has fallen off in the past few years. The March
Brown hatch barely happened this year. I use a MB ermerger that has
been a killer on this river in mid-June, but produced not one fish
this year. Caddis hatches have shown less density than years past.
If a river's flow can disrupt thousands of crawfish and wash them up
on the island at PIR, then I can only assume that some of the swimming
type larvae and even the net builders have also been washed into the
woods

Winter before last it became apparrent the the watershed above the reservoir
(larger than many Eastern states) was receiving a very heavy snow pack. So
about December the irrigation district increased flow from about 40 cfs to
600cfs and then in early spring increased flows to 1200cfs.. But that
wasn't even close to enough. By June flows were above 11000 cfs - over 40
times what they had been kept at during that time of year for decades - and
stayed at or near those levels for over a month..

I understand. However, if the lake is full in early April (it was)
and the flow is only 400 cfs, there is something wrong with FPL to
keep it at this low level for many weeks, only to open it up to 6700
cfs on the last week of May because "the lake is full." The previous
owners of the dam would have been running 1200 cfs as soon as the lake
was full and would have maintained that flow until they reached a
proper lake level. Also, one or two years, FPL panicked in early
April when the lake was full and lowered the lake to dangerous levels,
levels that remained low throughout the season thus dictating low
flows in the river. I believe that this is when the illegally stocked
bass in Umbagog came up-river. I recorded a temp reading during the
second week in June at PIR of 70+ degrees. Much too warm for this
river and for brook trout.

Of course there were many in the flyfishing community that wailed that the
fishery had been ruined and would take decades to recover if it ever did.
And of course fishing was next to impossible during the extremely high
flows. However, here only a year later, fishing has been great, with
prolific hatches of species of mayflies that that we rarely saw or even
hadn't been seen in years (though the Skwala hatch was very sparse, but will
likely be good next year). People did need to change what they carried in
their fly boxes though (BFD), as there were less of the ones, such as
calibaetis, that thrive in sediment.

We need to remember that before the dams were there, the river likely
periodically experienced flows that were both considerably higher or
considerably lower than we are used to seeing post dam. The trout survived
those conditions (if there even was a trout fishery prior to the dam). So
before we assume the sky is falling we may want to do a little more
reasearch into historic flow conditions.

I don't believe "the sky is falling," Bob, but I do believe that FPL
is misusing the water on this river. Middle Dam is not a power
producing dam, but was originally built for logging. I don't know
when that was, but I have seen a map of the area from the late 1800s
that shows both Middle Dam and Upper Dam. The most unique things
about the Rapid are the large pond formed less than a mile from the
dam, and the very steep gradiant of the river (hence the name, Rapid).
(It is an absolute joy to ride my bike *down* river, but the trip back
is a breaker of old men!) I am told by some old timers that have been
in the area for 65 years that there are cold springs in the PIR that
give haven for the trout during hot spells. The Pond is very shallow
but offers a respite from the warm water during these unusually low
flows. Without the pond, I believe these low flows would kill many
fish. There are more than a few deep holes down-river that the trout
must flee too when water temps get unusually high. One thing to
remember about all this is that we are dealing with a unigue strain of
Brook Trout. The Brook Trout is the canary in the mine. They can not
survive in dirty or warm water. They aren't sturdy like Browns.

Nice conversation (for a change). d;o)

Dave