Little Missouri Fly Fishing

I went fishing again this morning. I guess I am the definition of insanity!! They did not run a generator today as they have the past 3 days. We (my wife has an excellent sense of smell) noticed a chemical smell or acetylene smell the past 3 days when they ran water. We attributed it to the lake turning over as it always does this time of year. Here's what I found this morning: the river bottom is covered with dead crawfish, I'm talking about a LOT of dead crawfish, I saw no minnows, and no tadpoles. I saw no sign of any kind of fish (I haven't caught a fish in my past 4 outings). I tried to catch a bream, could not find one, there were not even any herons fishing the river! The otters were not in the wall hole or the meat hole, I assume their food source is gone so they are too.  I did turn a few rocks and found a few live Mayfly and Caddis larva, that's good! There were no rises as far as I could see down river. On another note, the water clarity and the bottom condition is better than I've seen it in 2 years!! The water temperature is 66 degrees.

I will not be putting out any generating information until after the AGFC stocks this river again, there is no need, there appear to be no fish, in my opinion!! This is a rather dead river right now. There was no smell this morning and no sign of any foreign substance in the water-that's a good thing.

Holy $&@$! 😵 I can't even speculate as to what might have created such adverse conditions as to kill off crawfish! 🧐

I'd be curious as to what the City of M'boro water department might have say about it. I can't imagine that it's good!

At least you found some mayflies, but stoneflies are known to be the best indicators of water quality. Unfortunately you'd have to dig kind of deep right now to find any...

Needless to say this is kind of frightening. I wonder what got dredged up to create this situation? The Lake should not be turning over this early. Might check with the Fant's at SWAHA to see if there's been any kind of spill. (The Corps may not tell us if there was...)

Again, just my opinion but the crawfish kill happened when they first cranked up a generator after the repairs. Maybe the divers got something in the water intakes while welding on the trash gates and it flushed out into the river with the first running of the generators after 2 years of the generators being down—-again I don't know. I know the water department has called for a river flush twice in the past 2 weeks. Something about can't keep their filters clean, but that was before they started the daily generating, while the river was full of the lime green slime.  They cranked up again yesterday at about 3 pm and ran until dark. Like I said, the water is really clear and the river bed is cleaning up from all the trash the bunger valves put in the river.

We had a paddle fish at the park believe it or not!!  A large one. I found it's nose paddle yesterday, it also had been killed off. Don't know if the otters got him along with the trout.  I have seen a few dead trout but nothing unusual, I think the otters had wiped out the fish before the crawfish kill. I can't say there are NO trout in the river, I'm saying I can find no sign of any. Maybe they have all hid out somewhere and will show back up, miracles happen!! 

The lake usually turns over in September but the smell the water had this time was not that, we get that smell every year. It was more of an industrial smell. It's mostly gone now so maybe  the river can clean up and get back to normal before stocking time in November   Mother Nature is pretty good at that!! 

Well, it all sounds pretty disappointing! 😑 September was always one of my favorite times to fish - people were few and far between and there were plenty enough really nice fish. Other way around this time, I guess... 🫤

Hope you can find something alive!

Paddlefish, by the way, weren't exactly rare in the river! Seen 'em here and there over the decades. Saw the AGFC net one up out of the stilling basin when they drained it to inspect the base of the dam! 😉 Everything might be a bit rare now! 😵�💫