Conan The Librarian wrote:
egildone wrote:

Looks like Oklahoma Wildlife Department is developing a first rate
Trout fishery in Oklahoma.

http://www.wildlifedepartment.com/streamrest.htm

What do you think?

I think it looks great. But with the first serious floods or
droughts, I expect it will be back to square one.

They've been trying for years to establish a year-round trout fishery
not far from here on the Guadalupe River below Canyon Dam. It's a
drawdown dam and so the water is normally cold-enough to support trout
in a stretch of river directly below the dam. This area originally was
stocked as part of the normal put-and-take trout fishing program, and
then folks started catching a few fish that seemed to be "over-summering".

The local branch of TU negotiated with the river authority to
maintain a summertime release of at least 150 CFS to help the trout
survive the hot weather. They also stocked adult browns and rainbows
in that area.

Everything looked good until the most recent "100 year flood", when
the water came *over* the dam and turned the lake over, causing the
temps to rise too high and kill a majority of the fish (plus they figure
the flooding had an effect on fish mortality by itself). It also cut
new channels in the river and basically flushed the bottom (not a bad
thing, but imagine what an event like that would do to the artificial
environment in the OK river).

Of course, since then we've had two years of severe drought, so the
river flow has been curtailed, and folks who have a stake in this are
just hoping and praying that the holdover fish are hunkered down in a
deep hole somewhere and have survived.

And of course there was the recent instance where some of the trout
fisher guys were trying to get a tournament together to catch striped
bass below the dam because the nasty old things were eating their
precious trout.

So I've seen what can happen when they try to establish a coldwater
fishery where none existed before, and I'm not very optimistic.


Chuck Vance (well, he asked, didn't he?)

Chuck,

In 2005, Jason Archie caught a 17 lb. 33 in. state record Brown Trout in
that river that they believe was from the first stocking in 1989. Of
course, we haven't had a 100 year flood since then either.

We also have another river where we have year around trout fishing, the
lower Illinois. Some fishermen catch the trout and use them for bait to
catch 30 in. plus Stripers that come up from the Arkansas river.

Ed