The high water on area rivers is getting a little old, isn’t it? As we reached the summer solstice last week, a big question was how much more high water will we get once get warm weather starts melting the high mountain snowpack.
Another question is how fish are doing during the sustained high water.
According to an extensive report recently posted to the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks website, the fish are doing just fine, thank you. FWP’s Fisheries Bureau chief, Bruce Rich notes, "Fish are well adapted to survive flooding, though they can sometimes be stranded when high water recedes, depending on where they took refuge.”
Mark Lere, a Future Fisheries program coordinator adds, "In high water like we're seeing this year, fish generally move to the margins of the river for refuge—to backwater areas, or warmer, less turbid side channels or tributaries." As rivers go over their banks, some fish may move out into the floodplain, and then return to the backwaters and side channels when waters finally recede.
The high waters also give rivers and stream a good cleaning, leaving clean gravels for future fish spawning periods. As waters recede, and we have to have confidence that they will, someday, go down, some fish may get stranded in some backwater channels, though overall, the high waters will benefit fish in the long run.
The prairie streams of eastern Montana have also been having high waters and there are interesting things happening, especially with an endangered fish, the pallid sturgeon.
Biologists have been tracking radio-tagged pallid sturgeon and have found several sturgeon have moved up from the Fort Peck Reservoir and up the Milk River, including one male pallid sturgeon that has traveled upstream 36 river miles, the farthest they have documented the species. They have also located a mature female pallid sturgeon in the Milk River, which means there’s a possibility of the fish spawning in the Milk River, something that hasn’t happened for many years.
2010 was another high water year and FWP documented the best production of paddlefish in the Milk River and shovelnose sturgeon in the Missouri River in the last 11 years.
The high waters will have other effects, including some that we may not appreciate. A week ago we made trips to Missoula and to Miles City, and on the Clark Fork River, plus crossing the three forks of the Missouri, along with the Yellowstone, Bighorn and Tongue Rivers, we could see floodwaters spread out across riparian areas. When the waters eventually recede there will be pools of stagnant water virtually everywhere along the floodplains, and pools of stagnant water combined with warm summer temperatures translate to mosquitoes. There will be so many mosquitoes in the flooded areas we’ll have to come up with new terminology to describe the record swarms of those bugs we love to hate.
We might also note that the prairie pothole areas of northern Montana and North Dakota are likely to have fantastic waterfowl production this summer. We’re going to have a lot of ducks this fall. Those ducks, incidentally, will eat a lot of mosquito larvae, so go ducks!
We’re also closely following the flood in Minot, North Dakota, where our son, Kevin, and his family live.
I reported earlier on heavy rains and flooding when we were there during the Memorial Day weekend. At that time, the floodwaters on the Souris (Mouse) River crested at levels just below the flood of 1969. Levees held and residents began to breathe a little easier, even though they expected rural areas to stay under water into July.
On June 19, there were torrential rainstorms in southern Saskatchewan and suddenly new flood projections came out. In 1969 the river reached a level of 1554.5 feet above sea level. The record flood level happened in 1881 when the river reached 1558 feet. Hydrologists predicted a new record flood level of 1563 feet.
Kevin’s home is on high ground, thankfully. Nevertheless, we can’t avoid worrying about the 10,000 people who left their homes when water went over the dikes last Wednesday.
Paul Vang's musings about fishing, hunting, and life in the great Montana outdoors.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Arizona Wildfires and the Aldo Leopold Connection
This summer a wildfire in eastern Arizona has blackened over 450,000 acres and is still growing.
A footnote to the fires is a connection to Aldo Leopold, the pioneering writer and naturalist. Leopold is considered the father of wildlife management, as well as a conservationist, forester, philosopher, educator and writer.
Leopold was among the original employees of the U.S. Forest Service and spent his early career in Arizona and New Mexico and was instrumental in designation of the Gila National Forest as a wilderness area in 1924.
He later transferred to Madison, Wisconsin to become assistant director of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory and later left the Forest Service to become a professor of game management at the University of Wisconsin, a first for the university and the nation.
In 1935, Leopold purchased a worn-out farm near Baraboo, Wisconsin and he and his family spent years at the farm, living in a rehabilitated chicken coop, nicknamed, “The Shack,” planting trees, restoring prairies and documenting changes on the farm.
Leopold wrote about the farm in his book, “A Sand County Almanac,” which was published posthumously in 1948. The book includes essays about his early years in Arizona, including, “On Top,” a story about White Mountain, “Thinking Like a Mountain,” and “Escudilla,” all describing areas in this year’s wildfires.
In “Thinking Like a Mountain,” Leopold recalled an incident when he and another forester shot into a pack of wolves. He wrote, “We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes…I was young then, and full of trigger-itch. I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean a hunter’s paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”
Leopold understood, long before many, the values of fire, predators and wilderness areas in the environment. While Leopold wrote many scientific articles, “A Sand County Almanac” was aimed at a more general audience. At the time of publication, the book drew little notice, but in the 1970s, a paperback edition turned into a surprise bestseller. The book has been translated into nine languages and is now considered one of the most influential environmental books of the 20th Century.
Aldo and Estella Leopold had five children, all of whom had significant careers in the natural sciences. A. Starker Leopold was a professor of Forestry and Conservation at the University of California-Berkeley. He died in 1983. Their second son, Luna Leopold, was the chief hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and also taught at Berkeley. He died in 2006. A. Carl Leopold was a plant physiologist at Purdue University and later dean of the graduate school at the University of Nebraska. In retirement he did landmark research on the tropical forests of Costa Rica. He died in 2009.
The older of two daughters, Nina Leopold Bradley did research in the 1940s on lead poisoning of waterfowl, decades before the problem became generally recognized and had a long career as a writer and teacher. Her second husband, Charles Bradley, was a professor and administrator at Montana State University and one of the founders of the Bridger Bowl ski area. After his retirement, they moved back to Wisconsin to continue Aldo Leopold’s work, including establishing the Aldo Leopold Foundation. In 1988 the University of Wisconsin awarded honorary doctorates to both Charles and Nina in recognition of their work. Charles died in 2002 and Nina died just last month, at age 93.
Estella Leopold, age 84, is the last of the remarkable siblings. She is a professor emeritus of botany at the University of Washington. During a 20-year career with the U.S. Geological Survey she was instrumental in establishing the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in central Colorado. During her academic career she did pioneering research with fossil pollen and seeds. She continues as an active leader in the Aldo Leopold Foundation.
Aldo Leopold was a pioneer in environmental thinking and through his writings, family and foundation, has an enduring, and yes, even a fireproof legacy.
A footnote to the fires is a connection to Aldo Leopold, the pioneering writer and naturalist. Leopold is considered the father of wildlife management, as well as a conservationist, forester, philosopher, educator and writer.
Leopold was among the original employees of the U.S. Forest Service and spent his early career in Arizona and New Mexico and was instrumental in designation of the Gila National Forest as a wilderness area in 1924.
He later transferred to Madison, Wisconsin to become assistant director of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory and later left the Forest Service to become a professor of game management at the University of Wisconsin, a first for the university and the nation.
In 1935, Leopold purchased a worn-out farm near Baraboo, Wisconsin and he and his family spent years at the farm, living in a rehabilitated chicken coop, nicknamed, “The Shack,” planting trees, restoring prairies and documenting changes on the farm.
Leopold wrote about the farm in his book, “A Sand County Almanac,” which was published posthumously in 1948. The book includes essays about his early years in Arizona, including, “On Top,” a story about White Mountain, “Thinking Like a Mountain,” and “Escudilla,” all describing areas in this year’s wildfires.
In “Thinking Like a Mountain,” Leopold recalled an incident when he and another forester shot into a pack of wolves. He wrote, “We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes…I was young then, and full of trigger-itch. I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean a hunter’s paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”
Leopold understood, long before many, the values of fire, predators and wilderness areas in the environment. While Leopold wrote many scientific articles, “A Sand County Almanac” was aimed at a more general audience. At the time of publication, the book drew little notice, but in the 1970s, a paperback edition turned into a surprise bestseller. The book has been translated into nine languages and is now considered one of the most influential environmental books of the 20th Century.
Aldo and Estella Leopold had five children, all of whom had significant careers in the natural sciences. A. Starker Leopold was a professor of Forestry and Conservation at the University of California-Berkeley. He died in 1983. Their second son, Luna Leopold, was the chief hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and also taught at Berkeley. He died in 2006. A. Carl Leopold was a plant physiologist at Purdue University and later dean of the graduate school at the University of Nebraska. In retirement he did landmark research on the tropical forests of Costa Rica. He died in 2009.
The older of two daughters, Nina Leopold Bradley did research in the 1940s on lead poisoning of waterfowl, decades before the problem became generally recognized and had a long career as a writer and teacher. Her second husband, Charles Bradley, was a professor and administrator at Montana State University and one of the founders of the Bridger Bowl ski area. After his retirement, they moved back to Wisconsin to continue Aldo Leopold’s work, including establishing the Aldo Leopold Foundation. In 1988 the University of Wisconsin awarded honorary doctorates to both Charles and Nina in recognition of their work. Charles died in 2002 and Nina died just last month, at age 93.
Estella Leopold, age 84, is the last of the remarkable siblings. She is a professor emeritus of botany at the University of Washington. During a 20-year career with the U.S. Geological Survey she was instrumental in establishing the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in central Colorado. During her academic career she did pioneering research with fossil pollen and seeds. She continues as an active leader in the Aldo Leopold Foundation.
Aldo Leopold was a pioneer in environmental thinking and through his writings, family and foundation, has an enduring, and yes, even a fireproof legacy.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Salmonfly Time in Montana - if You're Brave Enough
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| High water on Montana's Big Hole River. There is usually about 10 feet of clearance under this bridge. |
A couple weeks ago, when my son, Kevin, and I kept some North Dakota pike for dinner, we checked stomach contents to see what the fish had been eating. One pike had inch-long fish in its belly. That was no surprise, as pike love to eat other fish. Another fish, however, had white stringy-looking aquatic worms of some kind in its stomach. There have been other times when we’ve caught pike full of crayfish. We’ve also caught pike with bellies full of scuds, or what many think of as freshwater shrimp.
All of which demonstrates that northern pike are opportunistic feeders and there isn’t much in a pike’s neighborhood that they won’t eat, including baby muskrats and ducklings.
I seldom keep trout for dinner, so I usually don’t get that kind of information from trout I catch. Still, when I have a streamside chat with another angler it’s a good idea to pay attention when they provide post mortem information. A few weeks ago when camping on the Madison River, an angler from another campsite volunteered that he’d kept a couple fish, including a rainbow trout with a belly-full of salmonfly nymphs.
That was important news, a sign that salmon-flies, those stoneflies on steroids, were getting active in preparation for the annual transformation when Pteronarcys californica, or giant stonefly, leaves its home on the bottom of western rivers to crawl out of the water. Once out of the water, the insect climbs up streamside vegetation, such as willows or other brush, crawls out of its exoskeleton and emerge as a flying winged insect.
Fish feed on stonefly nymphs on a year-around basis, of course, as nymphs lose their grip on rocks and get picked off by alert fish. This time of year, however, those opportunities increase as nymphs migrate towards river shorelines, followed by trout in search of these big bites of protein.
The salmonfly emergence happens on many western rivers, though it’s not totally predictable just when those first nymphs will emerge from runoff-swollen rivers in search of a new identity and a literally once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to…shall we say, get lucky. Those female insects that don’t fall back into the river or get eaten by birds, and manage to mate, end their life cycle by flying back over the river to lay eggs along the water’s surface to start the next generation of giant stoneflies. It’s a cycle that has gone on for millions of years.
It’s an old tradition that on the Big Hole River, the salmonfly hatch begins on or about June 13, or Miners Union Day in Butte. On the other hand I’ve spotted adult salmon-flies on the Big Hole as early as Memorial Day and as late as the first week of July.
Just guessing, but this year the hatch will likely run late because of the cold spring we’ve had, as the hatch is triggered by a complex combination of water temperature and hours of daylight, or at least that’s how I understood the explanation that now-retired state fisheries biologist Dick Oswald gave me some years ago.
Another question is whether the Big Hole and other rivers with salmonfly hatches will be fishable when the big bugs emerge. Last week the amount of water rushing down the Big Hole River almost doubled to around 10,000 cubic feet per second as rains cut into the heavy mountain snowpack. There will, no doubt, be anglers out there floating the river during the high water, but for average boaters it’s downright dangerous in current conditions.
Still, the natural process continues and salmon-flies are emerging somewhere. In checking around I came across the website for Rock Creek Fisherman’s Mercantile, a flyshop near the mouth of Rock Creek. The shop reports the river is a roaring, chocolate torrent of water as it nears its confluence with the Clark Fork River. Still, salmon-flies were spotted on streamside bushes, preparing for the propagation of the species.
Life goes on, even if we’re not fishing.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Wind and Water on the North Dakota Prairies
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| Flyfishing for northern pike is fun - and tasty. |
That sums up some our travel of the last couple weeks.
Last week I wrote about impending flooding on southwestern Montana streams. The cold weather around Memorial Day pretty much put the local flooding on hold, though flooding in other parts of Montana, particularly in Hardin and Roundup, made national news.
We took a road trip out of Montana, though that didn’t get us out of flooding areas. In fact, it put us right in the middle of flooding. We went to Minot, North Dakota for Memorial Day weekend to take in the festivities of a granddaughter’s graduation from high school. While we were there, it also seemed like a good idea to do some fishing on area lakes with our son, Kevin.
There are a lot of lakes in north central North Dakota, though there is always the question of whether the wind will let you put a boat on the water. Our first day of fishing was breezy, though there wasn’t any problem with boating, at least not on the smaller lake we fished. In an afternoon of fishing we caught a number of pike and invited a couple of them home for a fish dinner.
The next day was one of those windy prairie days. It didn’t keep us from fishing, though we elected to leave the boat at home. We’ve fished this lake a number of times over the years and there’s a concrete pier at the public access point on the lake where we’ve tied up Kevin’s boat in the past. With a couple winters of heavy snows, the lake level is up and the pier is under a foot of water. This actually made for a good fishing spot, as there was deep water easily accessible for casting streamers for pike.
Flyfishing for northern pike still seems like kind of a novelty in Midwestern states, even if it’s a trendy thing to do among a lot of fly anglers. In any event, flyfishing seemed the most effective way to catch pike on this trip, with a purple Wooly Bugger, which resembles a leech in the water, the hot fly.
While we spent several days fishing, the weather continued to be a hot topic. This past winter was a hard one, with heavy snows all across central North Dakota and on into Canada. Back in 1969, Minot had a major flood that dominated the national news. Since then, Minot built a system of dikes along the Souris River, which flows through the city, and flooding in the city seemed to become a thing of the past.
This spring there has been a long flooding season in rural areas both above and downstream from the city. Driving out of town, looking at flooded areas downstream from the city, Kevin remarked, “It’s been like this for a couple months already, and there’s no end in sight.” That week, City crews feverishly hauled dirt to build up the level of the dikes in town.
Over that weekend rain dominated the weather. Heavy rain fell the night before Memorial Day, though it stopped by midday. Kevin and I took another fishing trip, fishing through what the Irish might call a “soft rain.” We hit the road to go back to Minot when Kevin’s wife phoned, concerned about our being caught in the storm. “What storm?” he asked. A thunderstorm had rolled through Minot that afternoon, with heavy rain.
Coming back into town, we could see rivers of water pouring down road ditches and hilly draws. That evening another rainstorm pounded the area and the next day large areas of the city were evacuated in fears that the dikes would fail, following reports of 4 inches of rain in areas northwest of Minot.
Other areas of North Dakota were bracing for a deluge of water coming from Montana’s Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, and the night before we visited friends in Fargo, they had winds estimated at almost 100 mph.
Yes, this is the season for wind and water and Montana and the Dakotas are at the center of it all.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Spring flooding, and a look back at some historic Montana floods
Mother Nature is, as usual, calling the shots this spring.
In the Mississippi River basin, Ol’ Man River is at its highest levels since the record floods of 1927. On the other hand, Texas and Oklahoma are in a severe drought and they’d like to have some of that water. Joplin, Missouri is cleaning-up following a devastating tornado last week, a storm that killed 116 people (at last count) and injured hundreds more.
Here in Montana people in river valleys are looking nervously at rising waters and wondering how high waters will rise. We have prime conditions for severe flooding this year, with a well above average snowpack and a cold spring that has kept that snowpack in place.
Last week there was flooding in eastern Montana, closing I-90 at Hardin, due to heavy rains that sent creeks over their banks., converging near the Little Bighorn Battlefield.
In western Montana, the big question is whether we’ll have either a heat wave or heavy rains to send all that snowpack down the mountains in one big surge of water.
Let’s take a look back at some historic Montana floods.
On June 19, 1938, a flash flood on Custer Creek near Terry, Montana, washed out a railroad bridge across the creek. When the Northern Pacific Olympic Special came through in the middle of the night, it crashed into the waters. 46 people were killed and many more were injured.
In 1997, Livingston experienced what was considered a 100-year flood in a scenario similar to this year. The mountains in the area had a snowpack of 200 percent of normal. In mid-May there was a heat wave with temps in the 80s, and that was followed by heavy rain.
Northwest Montana, on both sides of the Continental Divide, experienced what is considered Montana’s flood of the 20th Century in June 1964. Rainstorms on June 8 - 10 dumped as much as 14 inches of rain along the Divide in a 36 hour period, and streams that were already running high with snowmelt surged with water. Gibson Dam, on the upper Sun River, overflowed and floodwaters took out homes, roads and bridges all the way to Great Falls.
Farther north along the Divide, flooding on the Teton and Marias river systems destroyed an irrigation dam near Dupuyer, and caused massive damage on Blackfeet reservation communities of Heart Butte and Browning. In Glacier National Park, roads washed out, isolating Many Glacier hotel from Babb.
West of the Divide, the Middle Fork of the Flathead River went wild. The Flathead River at Columbia Falls crested at over 12 feet above flood stage. Areas up to a mile from the river were under four feet of water. Some 20,000 acres and several hundred homes along the Flathead River were flooded.
In a 2007 article in the Daily InterLake of Kalispell, reporter Heidi Gaiser noted one area that was hard hit in 1964, the community of Evergreen, along U.S. 2 northeast of Kalispell. Evergreen now has extensive commercial development in areas that went under water in 1964. As for possibilities of future flooding, Flathead County planner Tracy Sears-Tull said in that report, “It’s not a matter of if, but when it will happen.”
In all, the 1964 floods caused 30 deaths and inundated 20 percent of Montana’s surface area, which is a lot of real estate.
Flooding is, of course, a natural event. Floods cause problems when we humans encroach onto flood plains and build structures. Catastrophic flooding happens when dams fail, with the failure of the Teton River Dam in southeastern Idaho in 1976 as a classic example of dam failure, with consequent loss of life and property.
There are benefits to flooding, in that the waters enrich the soil over the floodplain, adding nutrients and organic matter, plus recharging aquifers. We can look at ancient Egypt where an entire civilization grew up and flourished, totally dependent on the benefits of the annual flooding of the Nile River.
Just the same, I’ll be looking forward to a month from now when waters recede and trout are taking dry flies.
In the Mississippi River basin, Ol’ Man River is at its highest levels since the record floods of 1927. On the other hand, Texas and Oklahoma are in a severe drought and they’d like to have some of that water. Joplin, Missouri is cleaning-up following a devastating tornado last week, a storm that killed 116 people (at last count) and injured hundreds more.
Here in Montana people in river valleys are looking nervously at rising waters and wondering how high waters will rise. We have prime conditions for severe flooding this year, with a well above average snowpack and a cold spring that has kept that snowpack in place.
Last week there was flooding in eastern Montana, closing I-90 at Hardin, due to heavy rains that sent creeks over their banks., converging near the Little Bighorn Battlefield.
In western Montana, the big question is whether we’ll have either a heat wave or heavy rains to send all that snowpack down the mountains in one big surge of water.
Let’s take a look back at some historic Montana floods.
On June 19, 1938, a flash flood on Custer Creek near Terry, Montana, washed out a railroad bridge across the creek. When the Northern Pacific Olympic Special came through in the middle of the night, it crashed into the waters. 46 people were killed and many more were injured.
In 1997, Livingston experienced what was considered a 100-year flood in a scenario similar to this year. The mountains in the area had a snowpack of 200 percent of normal. In mid-May there was a heat wave with temps in the 80s, and that was followed by heavy rain.
Northwest Montana, on both sides of the Continental Divide, experienced what is considered Montana’s flood of the 20th Century in June 1964. Rainstorms on June 8 - 10 dumped as much as 14 inches of rain along the Divide in a 36 hour period, and streams that were already running high with snowmelt surged with water. Gibson Dam, on the upper Sun River, overflowed and floodwaters took out homes, roads and bridges all the way to Great Falls.
Farther north along the Divide, flooding on the Teton and Marias river systems destroyed an irrigation dam near Dupuyer, and caused massive damage on Blackfeet reservation communities of Heart Butte and Browning. In Glacier National Park, roads washed out, isolating Many Glacier hotel from Babb.
West of the Divide, the Middle Fork of the Flathead River went wild. The Flathead River at Columbia Falls crested at over 12 feet above flood stage. Areas up to a mile from the river were under four feet of water. Some 20,000 acres and several hundred homes along the Flathead River were flooded.
In a 2007 article in the Daily InterLake of Kalispell, reporter Heidi Gaiser noted one area that was hard hit in 1964, the community of Evergreen, along U.S. 2 northeast of Kalispell. Evergreen now has extensive commercial development in areas that went under water in 1964. As for possibilities of future flooding, Flathead County planner Tracy Sears-Tull said in that report, “It’s not a matter of if, but when it will happen.”
In all, the 1964 floods caused 30 deaths and inundated 20 percent of Montana’s surface area, which is a lot of real estate.
Flooding is, of course, a natural event. Floods cause problems when we humans encroach onto flood plains and build structures. Catastrophic flooding happens when dams fail, with the failure of the Teton River Dam in southeastern Idaho in 1976 as a classic example of dam failure, with consequent loss of life and property.
There are benefits to flooding, in that the waters enrich the soil over the floodplain, adding nutrients and organic matter, plus recharging aquifers. We can look at ancient Egypt where an entire civilization grew up and flourished, totally dependent on the benefits of the annual flooding of the Nile River.
Just the same, I’ll be looking forward to a month from now when waters recede and trout are taking dry flies.
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