Water Levels

The pool 2 water levels seem to be way down. I don’t have enough experience watching the river year after year to know if this is normal in the summer or if is mainly due to our lack of rain.

In these circumstances, what should we be looking for? My thoughts are finding a good current now is more important than ever. When I went out Wed. there seemed to be alot of “dead” water. In fact, the first spot I fished, although it was a nice log jam, didn’t have enough oxygen to make my bullheads lively. When I dipped them in other places later on, they were much more active.

Am I on to something or on something?

I think we fished that same area. I did find that a little closer to the launch there is a nice deep hole that I a quite a few hits on. It was on the other side of the wing dam there is a big hole that drops 25 feet I figure. A little rain should liven things up a bit.

Youre right Pug, The water is low on Pool 2, and probably the rest of the Miss. This common during mid to late summer, at least since I have been fishing the river. This summer is one of the driest I have seen in a while. It makes the fishing tough. If we didnt have dams to hold back some water, I think the water would probably be much lower and fishing would be even worse. But that is just a theory of mine. I think youre right, finding good current is the way to go especially right now.

I dont know much about the oxygen levels effecting the bullheads, but I do know bullheads are very tolerant of low levels. Maybe the current just makes them swim more.

My theory is that the cat family is tolerant of low oxygen levels because their metabolism adjusts to oxygen rates. Low oxygen means lower metabolism which means less movement. It wasn’t just the bullies on the line that were acting that way. I moved from that first spot pretty quick as it appeared I was going to have dead bullheads in my bait bucket, even though they were soaking in the water. When I moved to the other spots, they were much better and seemed not to be stressed.