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Post by darrelln09 on Jan 22, 2019 20:35:24 GMT -6
I wouldn’t say they mismanage their rivers. I’d say they correctly manage them considering their primary goal is to make money by selling hydroelectricity. They don’t really care if there’s even one day wadeable flows all year. It’s not why SWPA exists. They don’t make one more red cent if people get to fish. I’m not a hydroelectric engineer, so I don’t understand all the ins and outs of the utility business, but I think I have a basic understanding of how business works, and water is a commodity. If you’re SWPA it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to run water on summer nights when power demand is at a bare minimum, deplete your water stores, and then have no water to use in the winter when power demand is at its highest. My guess is you probably want to keep the reservoirs at 90-95% capacity so you can have enough water for peak demand but not so high that you’re one rain event away from a massive flood. As far as building a dam to block migration of stripers upstream goes, that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. The McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River system is a world class striper fishery and the Lower Illinois River is an integral part of that fishery, in fact the state record striper came from the lower Illinois. Why mess a up a great striper fishery to protect a bunch of stocked trout? It’s not like that river produces wild fish or anything like that. It’s always been more or less a seasonal stocker fishery. Same fish they are dumping in the blue river right now that will all be dead by May. No reason to mess with a perfectly good striper fishery to protect a couple stockers. I’d be willing to wager most of the fly fishing community would prefer to catch a striper to a stocked trout any day of the week. I know I would. I get that you’re passionate about it man. I like fishing there too in the wintertime and it’s the closest thing to OKC for me by a long shot. I think you just have to accept that trout fishing isn’t why these big dams were created, it’s just a by product of creating them and we sometimes get favorable enough conditions that we get to go enjoy them. Just the nature of fishing tailwaters. I’m not kidding about checking out roaring river either. There’s a bunch of stuff in Missouri that you would like and almost none of them are tailwaters. Roaring river is catch and release flies only through the middle of February, as are the other 3 trout parks. Crane creek is pretty close for you too and it’s all wild fish over there. There’s a lot of trout water over there in fact and they do a good job with regulations. As close as you are you should look into it. Just a few points here and then I’ll get off my soapbox. - No hydroelectric power revenue is received on the water that goes through the flood control gates.
- The lake level has been trending steadily upward since late October. A little proactive thinking could have slowed the rise rate and probably avoided panic mode. (Opening the gates.)
- My thought on the rereg dam was to separate the trout in the upper half from the stripers in the lower half. Otherwise, the “year-around trout stream” promotion is really just a cover for the plan to fatten up the stripers.
On the other hand, I’m going to start traveling to Missouri. The Roaring River (2.5 hrs), Crane Creek (2.5 hrs), and Taneycomo (3.5 hrs) all sound really nice. Thank you for those suggestions! I was not familiar with Crane Creek at all. I also enjoyed the Little Red River (4 hrs) very much when I was there in September.
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Post by dainw on Jan 22, 2019 20:44:42 GMT -6
When's the best time to fish the LIR for stripers? That sounds like fun. June. Let’s go. Got to be at 3 in the morning though.
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Post by FlyAndStream on Jan 22, 2019 20:54:21 GMT -6
June. Let’s go. Got to be at 3 in the morning though. Ride or die, homie – let's go.
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Post by dainw on Jan 23, 2019 9:23:52 GMT -6
I wouldn’t say they mismanage their rivers. I’d say they correctly manage them considering their primary goal is to make money by selling hydroelectricity. They don’t really care if there’s even one day wadeable flows all year. It’s not why SWPA exists. They don’t make one more red cent if people get to fish. I’m not a hydroelectric engineer, so I don’t understand all the ins and outs of the utility business, but I think I have a basic understanding of how business works, and water is a commodity. If you’re SWPA it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to run water on summer nights when power demand is at a bare minimum, deplete your water stores, and then have no water to use in the winter when power demand is at its highest. My guess is you probably want to keep the reservoirs at 90-95% capacity so you can have enough water for peak demand but not so high that you’re one rain event away from a massive flood. As far as building a dam to block migration of stripers upstream goes, that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. The McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River system is a world class striper fishery and the Lower Illinois River is an integral part of that fishery, in fact the state record striper came from the lower Illinois. Why mess a up a great striper fishery to protect a bunch of stocked trout? It’s not like that river produces wild fish or anything like that. It’s always been more or less a seasonal stocker fishery. Same fish they are dumping in the blue river right now that will all be dead by May. No reason to mess with a perfectly good striper fishery to protect a couple stockers. I’d be willing to wager most of the fly fishing community would prefer to catch a striper to a stocked trout any day of the week. I know I would. I get that you’re passionate about it man. I like fishing there too in the wintertime and it’s the closest thing to OKC for me by a long shot. I think you just have to accept that trout fishing isn’t why these big dams were created, it’s just a by product of creating them and we sometimes get favorable enough conditions that we get to go enjoy them. Just the nature of fishing tailwaters. I’m not kidding about checking out roaring river either. There’s a bunch of stuff in Missouri that you would like and almost none of them are tailwaters. Roaring river is catch and release flies only through the middle of February, as are the other 3 trout parks. Crane creek is pretty close for you too and it’s all wild fish over there. There’s a lot of trout water over there in fact and they do a good job with regulations. As close as you are you should look into it. Just a few points here and then I’ll get off my soapbox. - No hydroelectric power revenue is received on the water that goes through the flood control gates.
- The lake level has been trending steadily upward since late October. A little proactive thinking could have slowed the rise rate and probably avoided panic mode. (Opening the gates.)
- My thought on the rereg dam was to separate the trout in the upper half from the stripers in the lower half. Otherwise, the “year-around trout stream” promotion is really just a cover for the plan to fatten up the stripers.
On the other hand, I’m going to start traveling to Missouri. The Roaring River (2.5 hrs), Crane Creek (2.5 hrs), and Taneycomo (3.5 hrs) all sound really nice. Thank you for those suggestions! I was not familiar with Crane Creek at all. I also enjoyed the Little Red River (4 hrs) very much when I was there in September. Southwest Power doesn’t control releases from the flood gates. That’s the Corps of Engineers. Corps of Engineers is only concerned with flood control/mitigation. I assume they have override power in emergency situations and can tell the SWPA to run the turbines if needed. To the extent those two entities corroborate/share information I have no clue. The problem with the dam at Tenkiller is that it’s a smaller dam comparatively to the size of the lake. It can only run 4,000 CFS through the turbines at most, so the flood gates get opened a lot more often than they do at say bull shoals where they can run 25,000 CFS through the turbnines. I don’t know that anyone was in panic mode necessarily, but they do need to generate for power demand right now as well as mitigate against the lake rising too fast due to current inflow levels. Again, just spitballing here, but in general I would think southwest power’s prerogative is to store water in the fall in preparation for high water demand come winter time and then drain the lakes in preparation for spring rains and then store water again during the spring rainy season in preparation for peak peak power demand during the hot summer. Again who knows what really goes on but that’s probably how I would run it if I was in charge. And yes to be honest lower Illinois is not a year round trout fishery. Never has been in my opinion. Even when the low flow valve was broken trout fishing still sucked in the summer. Tbh, I don’t even consider broken bow to be a year round trout fishery. Trout survive and holdover during the summer, but conditions aren’t conducive to having really productive fishing. This is Oklahoma after all. Trout fishing is going to have its limits. Probably better to chase other species in the summer if you’re looking to fish locally.
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Post by dainw on Jan 25, 2019 16:33:22 GMT -6
Looks like they opened up the gates and are releasing almost 6,000 CFS. Inflow has dropped substantially and water is on the way down. Hopefully it’s fishable again in a week or two.
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