Peter Charles wrote:

[good TR snipped]

I'm always amazed at how the fish rebound from these sorts of
disasters. Imagine what the conditions must be like for them. Their
normally clear water is now the consistency of chocolate milk, there's
all sorts of debris being washed down at them, the bottom is getting
scoured, the current is way up in strength and volume, the water temps
must be all over the map. They must look for a big boulder or deep
hole and just hunker down. The coming of more normal conditions must
just set off a feeding frenzy for the survivors.

However, I can't overlook the stories that came out of the Grand the
last time it was blown as you described. A road intersection was
under water and, according to the storyteller, there were rising trout
in the middle of it!


I caught fish in very high water conditions one time. The trout were using
the backwater eddy behind a concrete picnic table as a feeding station.
It was on a tailwater so the water was pretty clear. Pretty strange!

Like you said, trout deal with these types of situations reasonably
well. The species evolved with these types of conditions happening on a
periodic basis. There is some mortality when conditions are VERY bad,
but if they couldn't rebound from them, they would be extinct.

I think that the same thing applies to the insect populations. Scouring
floods might change the insect population and have some short term
negative effects. However, these "scours" will have beneficial results
for some species of insects, short term, and negative ones for others.
Floods have been going on as long as these insects have been evolving.

Willi