Low Water Pics

[Charlie Gonzales]

I followed the river as the flows dropped today. I started at the hatchery where they were placeing the screens for the fish ladder, they said they had to drop the flows lower than normal so they could remove a kayak that was wrapped around one of the post. It didnt appear that it was anywhere near 500cfs as reported; I rechecked the flows when I got home and it looks as if it never dropped below 1000cfs. River still looked in good shape and on the south side of the river I didnt find a lot of garbage to take out.

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[STEELIES/26c3]

Hey Charlie~

If you found any BC Steele spoons, I'll trade you twice their value in Bic lighters and name brand sunglasses~;)

It was good to see such a healthy population of larval lamprey where I was too... pero él no hay bueno para mí on lure recovery.

It'll be interesting to see how the closure of the upper river plays out this year...

Cool perspective on the annual toilet flush

M

[BobVP]

.....but what river is this?

We "coasties" haven't a clue sometimes.

[Garrett S]

.....but what river is this?



The American River

[ptychocheilus]

Sweet river lamprey!! Kind of surprising to see a transformed adult this time of year...

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

The Lower American River doesn't get down to 500 cfs very often, thank God.

It was a chance to see the bottom contour though.

[David Lee]

Great shots !!

That Crawdad doesn't like the way you're lookin' at him , Charlie ..... he doesn't like it AT ALL -

I remember around 1999-2003 ?? , it ran @ 1200 CFS (except for runoff , of course) year-'round . I did fish it one day @ 800 - kinda fun .... crossing in places that you usually couldn't .

David

[matt johnson]

Thanks for sharing the pics Charlie.

It looks to me like the King is missing its adipose fin? If so, go back and cut its snout off. Buried like treasure in its snout will be a tiny piece of encoded stainless wire that will tell you how old the fish is, what hatchery it is from, what race of Chinook it is, and where it was released to go to the ocean. 25% of all 2 and 3 year old hatchery fall run Chinook returning to Central Valley rivers this year are going to be marked this way.

Nice to hear that you guys saw lots of juv. Lamprey. They are a really neat fish. Hopefully they were not all becoming Egret bait and were getting out with the receeding flows. Matt.

[Ed Wahl]

I've got a question concerning those eels. Does anyone have any idea just how deep the sand bars are normally that these guys burrow into?

I was there with Charlie at Gristmill and the sand bar was usually in about a foot of water. If that's normal, and assuming the eels use the sand bars all up and down the river, did we just lose most of a year class of juvenile eels?

Charlie was "re-watering" them (tossing them back in the water) when I showed up and I kept it up for about an hour after he left, by then either they had all emerged and got tossed back into the water or just died. One small sand bar with hundreds of juv lamprey living in it.

Luckily for me Charlie was too engrossed in saving eels to get a shot of me dragging my pram back upstream over 1 inch deep gravel.

Only caught one fish, a world record Largemouth Bass. :unibrow:

Ed

[Darian]

I guess the lowering of the water levels for installation of the screens at the weir is done every year. Yet, the Lamprey still inhabit the length of the lower river.... :confused: Kinda makes ya wonder how many would be here if they didn't lower the flows.... :-k

Charlie,.... How long were the Larva (in inches) :question: I'll be using the pics to continue developing a Lamprey pattern for Stripers. :nod:

[Charlie Gonzales]

Matt, how far back into the snout do I cut and how big is the wire? If the fish is still there.

Darian, most of them were 3 to 4 inches in length and looked just like a nght crawler, but there were some about an inch in length too. Most were a brownish olive but some were much darker. Now, the adults I saw this year were a foot or so long.

Ed, thanks for picking up where I left off. I was totaly amazed how many juvies there were for how few adults I saw this year and hopefuly our efforts will bring us some good fish Karma. I wish I could have made it all the way down to paradise because I would think that the lower river would prime habitat for them.

I remember as a kid one of the first times I saw a Lamprey. A good size striper was chasing it and the Lamprey kept launching itself out of the water trying to escape, but eventualy it was lunch. The Goding brothers and I were fortunate enough to see this last year also, but this time the prey was a good size half pounder.

[Jgoding]

Ha ha Charlie, that was one of the coolest things I've ever seen out there..... All of a sudden this little steelie is just porpoising out of the water non stop like it was hooked.... then you saw the wake pop up behind it.... I think he would've been alright if he stayed in open water but he made a run for the shallows in the bank and just got exploded on...

I remember my bro throwing a juvi lamprey in one of my fish tanks... never saw it after that.... just burrowed in and was gonzo...

[matt johnson]

Chuck, the wire is super tiny, you would have to get out your microscope, so I wouldn't bother.....

I looked at CDEC and saw that the flow drop lasted about 31 hours or so? Hopefully the larval Lamprey you guys saw were able to burrow down into wet gravel and suck it up overnight? Dam controlled rivers can be brutal on fish...

With a bunch of juv. lamprey in the river, you guys should all be fishing slim olive/brown string leeches about 4-6 inches long. The juv. lamprey or "ammocetes" spend several years in the river. Mostly buried, but they get kicked around voluntarily and involuntarily. All kinds of fish love to eat those things!!! Try it!

[Charlie Gonzales]

Heres my version of a string leech
http://i490.photobucket.com/albums/rr262/BigValleyGuide/stringleech001.jpg

[Ed Wahl]

Charlie, where would a person find a recipe for that thing?

Ed

[Charlie Gonzales]

Recipe as follows....

Go to grocery store, pick up 6pack of Racer 5, bring to my house.