For the week of  September 5 - 11, 2001

Fish and Game salvages Big Wood fish

Trout are moved to upper river

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By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

This summer’s drought has impacted more than Idaho farmers and irrigators. Fish, too, are suffering through the hot, dry months as they wait for Mother Nature to refill the streams and rivers that sustain their lives.

Fred Partridge, far left, leads a team of Idaho Fish and Game employees up the Glendale Canal. Partridge, who is the regional fisheries manager, was rescuing fish from the shrinking amount of water left in the canal on Thursday and moving them to Rooks Creek. Express Photo by Peter Boltz

 

In response to the low water and an adjustment in irrigation patterns, Idaho Department of Fish and Game personnel worked late last week to salvage fish from the Big Wood River between Bellevue and the Glendale Road bridge.

The river was plugged at the Baseline irrigation diversion in Bellevue last week. Prior to that, the river continued to flow downstream to the Glendale diversion, which feeds canals on the east and west sides of the river.

On Thursday, Fish and Game crews captured 600 fish 4 inches or larger and between 1,000 and 2,000 fingerlings in a two-mile stretch of the Big Wood, which pooled, rather than flowed, through the area. The fish, mostly rainbow trout, were relocated to stretches of the Big Wood north and south of Ketchum.

"Our primary targets were fish that were older, 4 inches and up, one-year-old fish and older, but there were absolutely thousands of little fish," Fish and Game Conservation Officer Roger Olson said.

The Big Wood River has been flowing below average all summer. On Friday, it flowed at just 99 cubic feet per second at the Hailey gauge. The average flow for the date is 170 cfs.

The river peaked this spring in May with flows of about 800 cfs. The average peak is over 2,000 cfs.

Olson said that, while the summer appears to have been disastrous to fish populations, department personnel are not overly worried.

"It’s a complete loss of fish, obviously, in those stretches right now, but we have a very healthy and very productive system," he said. "There are literally thousands of little trout that were produced just this year in there."

Olson said that because fish migrate extensively throughout the system, fish populations will easily recover when water returns.

The last time Fish and Game salvaged fish from the Big Wood River was in 1993, also a drought year, Olson said.

But the Big Wood isn’t the only local river devoid of water.

Trail Creek, below Sun Valley Co.’s Dollar Road dam has been flowing feebly, or not at all, for about a month.

Olson said Fish and Game has not taken action to salvage fish in that area. Additionally, Sun Valley Co. drained the lake this week, which could return modest flows to stream.

Sun Valley holds massive water rights on Trail Creek and uses the water to irrigate its golf course and landscaping. Sun Valley has a large irrigation diversion about 100 yards downstream of Trail Creek Cabin.

Sun Valley Co. spokesman Jack Sibbach said Sun Valley will probably continue to irrigate through the end of October.

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