Bow River Fishery Closure In 2016?

[fishteck]

High temperature and low flows in the Eastern-Slopes streams and rivers of the Rockies prompted the Alberta Government to issue a fishing advisory for the region today.

 

If temperatures remain high and Bow River flows continue to be low through the summer, will we see a fishery closure on the river later in the summer? I believe YES.

 

Go to www.bowrivertrout.org for some addition information

[LastBoyScout]

Could be a lot of closures if current weather continues, hopefully lessons were learned last year when they tried.

[bcubed]

And yet still seeing lots of grip n grins on FB and Instagram. Sigh

[jpinkster]

We've had some rolling thunderstorms in Calgary over the last number of days. These storms have been quick and violent. Despite the storms, there has been little impact on flow rates (and I suspect the same is true in the headwaters). Obviously thunderstorms are better than nothing, but does a sudden surge of precipitation offer any real relief? Is it only soaking rain over a number of hours that can dramatically impact flow rates? The discharge from the dams plays a roll in this, but the reservoirs are all seasonally low as well. If we are counting on sustained rainfall to get us through this difficult patch, we might be kidding ourselves this year.

 

 

 

And yet still seeing lots of grip n grins on FB and Instagram. Sigh

And seriously. If you're not keeping them wet this year, you may as well be bonking them.

[bcubed]

we need a sustained week of like 10-12 degree weather. Or transalta to F up and send cold water down like they did in 2012.

 

Rain pulses through pretty quick (usually a day from Calgary to Carseland). Water was at 21 at Carseland on the 2nd according to the chart (seems that the temp gauge is no longer working?) despite the big hail event last week.

[TerryH]

It's not just the Bow. The graphs for the Crow, Castle, and Oldman all look the same - flows well below the lower quartile.

[jgib01]

Flow seemed maybe a little higher on the Upper Oldman Friday morning. That's just anecdotal, and the charts will tell a better/more accurate story. I didn't think to stop to get some water temps, as I was on a short timeline and was just excited to be out there (such a rookie move!). There certainly were some dramatic weather things happening over the weekend. We were camped at Chain Lakes (wow, that reservoir is low!) and got drenched several times, but nothing sustained. This morning's long-term forecast for us in Lethbridge looks as though it will perhaps not greatly exacerbate things, but won't solve them either. Highs in the low to mid-20's are decent for this time of year... could be far worse.

[BurningChrome]

Flow seemed maybe a little higher on the Upper Oldman Friday morning. That's just anecdotal, and the charts will tell a better/more accurate story.

That was probably caused by a couple of storms dumping lots of rain that moved through on Thursday. The second storm that came through around 4pm completely blew out Dutch.

[albertatrout]

Here's how it looks vs past years, data for other drainage's are available on this site as well. http://environment.alberta.ca/forecasting/WaterSupply/jun2016/bowwsf.html

Though rivers are low, this is not unprecedented for the most part (a few stations are pretty stinking low). Look through a few basins, it's not looking apocalyptic by any stretch of the imagination. The Bow is a bit of a special case this year (and last), but you can blame our flood paranoid politicians for that to some extent. Drought is more common than flooding in this province, proper risk analyses should have been done rather than just willy nilly political games. I fear the worst could still be on the way for some systems, hope to be wrong though. I worry the lower reservoir levels will also mean higher background temps below the dams (less volume, the water will heat up more, simple grade school science). Even 1 or 2 degrees can be game changers come the low flow dog days of summer when we are already approaching lethal temps for trout. At least the forecast looks a bit better, lets hope the rest of the summer goes that route..

[fishteck]

Does anyone look at the bow river reservoir storage reports. See the following link, it is published every day.

 

Although a lot of the chat revolves around the Ghost Reservoir Floor Mitigation Project that AEP and TransAlta agreed to run for 3 years. Water was released from the dam in May and June with a hold back of flows to fill the dam to normal operating capacity by the end of the first week of July. What caused the extremely low flows this year was a combination of low snow pack, and early run-off and drought conditions the last month.

 

The Ghost Reservoir fill is taking place now. On June 30, Ghost Reservoir was at 46% capacity and from what information I have been given, will not reach historical fill levels this year. Starting next week we should see a slight increase in flows once the dam operating procedures return to normal for this time of year, that is, "water in - water out". If, or when it rains we will see a corresponding variation in flows as the rivers rise upstream of Ghost Reservoir. Some of that water could be held back to add to the Ghost storage capacity.

 

https://bowrivertrout.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/res_storage-jun30.pdf

 

Have a look at the reservoir capacity for dams upstream of Ghost on the Bow River and Barrier upstream on Kananaskis River, just about all are extremely low. Cascade that has one of the highest storage capacity on the upstream dam system is only at 56%.

 

If anyone wants to blame someone for the low flows it needs to be pointed to the fishing community for not having organized opposition to flood mitigation projects. But, opposition to the management of potential floods would not get much of a hearing.

 

Just pray for rain and not too much at one time!

[trailhead]

I was fishing the Elbow this morning and the water temp was 12 C. Looked up past outings in my diary and it is pretty close to what the normal is for this time of year I checked and in 2012 the temperature was 13 C. However in 2012 I had a much better day with about 10 fish to hand. Mainly browns, a cuttbow and a couple of brookies. Today all I could get to hand was a couple of whitefish, had a two browns on but they spit the hook, and they weren't that big. It seems to me that they 2013 flood is having more of an impact than water temps, I think a lot of fish got displaced and most of the holes that I fished are gone.