Pool 7 Last night… LMB=Good SMB=???

Last night faired well for me and my partner… largest LMB was 17.75″… pretty fish. Caught a number of Largemouth, but once again, no smallies to be had. One boat turned in a 15″ smally he caught on a popper… in largemouth territory… Hmmmm….

All in all, a good night.

A BEAUTIFUL evening to be on the water. Sad thing is the evenings are getting shorter… tough to get a lot of time on the water after work… anyone realize Labor Day is already just around the corner… I guess the good news is the fall frenzy of big smallies is surely coming up soon!

Water is certainly low and current darn near non-existant. You find it, you find fish. Though, the lake with no current seemed to have OODLES (Credit for a goofy word?) of baitfish jumping, but couldn’t find the bass that were likely stalking them.

Good luck fishing.

With the water being so low on most pools, is there a reason for this. Being that not much rain in the forecast I would think they should be hold back some water. Does anyone know what the reason is (if any)…..Just curious…

not sure that I understand your question. the flow is as low as I can remember it being. the flow during the ice season usually isn’t this low. so, they are holding back water.

There is about an 8 foot drop from the pool to the tailwater at Dam 7, and a 9.5 foot drop at Pool 8, so they are holding back probably about as much as they can right now.

16,000 CFS at L&D 7, that is what it was at all winter, and this was a low water winter. No rain forecast now through next Wednesday either.

If this continues into October, the duck blinds on all 5 ponds with water in them are going to be pretty crowded!!

Guess I just don’t understand how the flow and stage of each pool is handled. Never worried about it before when I fished on the river. Something I know affects the fishing and can usually find fish either way. Just another thing I guess I need to learn about the river. As if the isn’t enough to try to figure out anyways. I guess what I was trying to figure out (still) was a couple of weeks ago at the BFL the water was low…But 2 weeks before that the water was high. From one extreme to the other….And this caught me way off guard..Another lessoned learned.. Is there a way to learn how the water is held and released otherthan by experience????

Back in the late 80’s, I worked for the USFWS and we did some work with the water level data. (This may have changed since then, if so, I apologize). In theory, the Corps has a manual of operations, and will adjust the level of the gates according to flow. They never (I don’t think) hold back or release water intentionally not according to this chart except for in times of drawdown like last summer on 8. They try and maintain a certain “pool elevation” (water height at the upstream side of the dam. Most pools also have a mid pool “control Point” that factors in. Once the flow in CFS reaches a certain level, the gates are withdrawn from the water, and the river is allowed to flow free. This happens at different flows on each Pool. For instance, in times of flood, I have noticed L&D 5a comes out before any of the others in this region.

Check around on the Corps site, there may be a much better explanation than I gave here.

Hope this helps more than it confuses.

And here I though the Corp waited for me to enter a tournament find good fish and then let a foot of water go the night before. Silly me. I will be on 9 Sunday just to see how low the water is.