After The Flood

[peetso]

From a 1000 km away, I could see trouble.

I phoned the father in law who has lived in/near Longview his entire 70 years and he said he'd never seen the river this angry. Trees, homes, roads, bridges, campgrounds. All washed away.

As the floodwaters receded the damage was evident.

Hundreds and hundreds of people lost homes and businesses. Three people lost it all.

Drowned in the floodwaters.

I finally made it down to see the damage to the river I consider my spiritual home. I wouldn't have much time to explore but I had a morning and a day to fish.

Day 1:(about a week ago)

The first morning was cold and desolate. As I walked down the damage was plain to see. 30-40 feet up the banks were completely scoured. Bark completely sanded off the trees. Vegetation ripped out. The whole place had an almost lifeless feel.

I fished for a few hours with nary a sign of life, until I was finally able to coax up this Bull on a swung streamer.

Some evidence that something had survived.

[peetso]

Day 2:

A familar walk through the pasture.

But coming to the river and standing where the high water mark had been, I quickly realized how much the river had changed.

I've never been so happy to see a six inch fish in my life.

But that it was it. The bug life had all but disappeared and seemed that the only thing that these fish would have to eat was each other.

I started to swing baitfish patterns through the deep holes and scared up a few bulls.

But no sign of the beautiful rainbows and cutts I normally find in abundance here.

Until this beauty took a liking to the streamer.

Then I headed up the tribs. Which seemed to fair better. With fish taking bugs off the surface . . .

. . . but in nowhere near the numbers that I usually find here.

It was disheartening to see the river in such shape but as I stood in the river and sunk up to my knees in gravelbed completely devoid of silt, I'm optimistic that this river will once again be what it once was.

[FraserN]

Wonderful post on what is likely my favorite river. It sure took a pounding when I saw the canyon a few days ago. Lets hope it recovers quickly.

[RedBeard]

Beauty pictures. Thanks for sharing!

[fishinglibin]

Good info and great pics. Thx

[WinstonConfluentus]

Thanks for the honest, heartfelt post. The upper Oldman (my spiritual and often literal home), is in similar condition. The headwaters of both the Highwood and Oldman zig-zag between the peaks and this was the area that received the greatest amount of rain. The devastation is utter and complete in some areas. If you really want a bad day check out the area on Google Earth; its not too hard to correlate the ferocity of the event with the clear cuts. Pasque, Cataract, Dry, Savanna, Wilkinson they are all nothing but gravel, silt and logs now. Hidden Creek, my natal stream, is in big trouble too. Between the clear cuts last fall and the flood this spring we still dont know if there will be anywhere to spawn. I dont know if anyone has noticed, but the Oldman continues to run dirty; its all coming from Hidden Creek as every other trib has cleared. If fish could cry

[PeteZahut]

I don't think the oldman is running dirty. Was up there a couple of weeks ago and pretty sure I was below hidden creek and the water was almost gin clear. Also fished above where dutch comes in and I thought it was fairly decent too.

 

I am confused by a lot of these reports. We spent five awesome days on oldman, dutch and Livingston a couple of weeks ago plus a day on racehorse the week before and didn't see half the issues being reported. The wife and I had close to personal bests for numbers and caught a few nice sized ones. I don't dispute there was devastation up there but I must have different standards or something.

 

Oh well, keep reporting doom. I will enjoy my time out there.

[jjthom2]

The correlation between heavily logged drainages and flooding should be looked at. A mature spruce tree can take up 100 gallons of water per day - this has to have a huge effect on buffering a heavy rainfall event.

People in the timber industry will argue that it's all destined to burn eventually anyway and though that may be true, the ecosystem that developed after a fire is far different than what is left after clear cut harvesting.

[PeteZahut]

I don't think the oldman is running dirty. Was up there a couple of weeks ago and pretty sure I was below hidden creek and the water was almost gin clear. Also fished above where dutch comes in and I thought it was fairly decent too.

 

I am confused by a lot of these reports. We spent five awesome days on oldman, dutch and Livingston a couple of weeks ago plus a day on racehorse the week before and didn't see half the issues being reported. The wife and I had close to personal bests for numbers and caught a few nice sized ones. I don't dispute there was devastation up there but I must have different standards or something.

 

Oh well, keep reporting doom. I will enjoy my time out there.

[PeteZahut]

Oops, not sure why it double posted. Sorry about that.

[darrinhurst]

Was out at the Oldman Sunday. It's running dirty. Cleaner than the Livingston, but dirty. Far from what I would call gin clear.

[Muffin]

Great post and pictures Peetso, thanks for sharing.

 

I was up on the livingston and old man on Friday and it was muddy but it had also rained all morning and I assume most of the previous night.

[SteveM]

Great pics, as always!

Here's hoping these waters bounce back well; fingers crossed!

It just boggles the mind to imagine the sheer volume of water that ripped through these areas.

Would be nice to see some bugs; I've been down that way a couple times lately, and have seen eff-all in the way of hatches...

[Vagabond]

I won't dispute the effects of clearcutting,I've seen how it dramatically alters salmon and trout watersheds back east far too many times,but this flood was a significant and historical weather event of near biblical proportions,a freak "perfect storm" if you will where 20' of snow cover and 200mm+ of rain came down the hills in 72hrs.......I don't think you can blame logging.

[bcubed]

While you can't blame logging for the weather event, you can still point a finger a little bit.. When the cataract has almost no trees in its headwaters to hold anything back, it's not going to go well when it dumps that much rain.

 

Sure glad they felt like logging Hidden Creek one last time...