Thanks
Richard
All: In early March this year a heavy rain storm cell sat over the badly burned Cold Canyon/Wildhorse Canyon watershed for several hours, dumping inches of rain onto the steep canyon slopes, and heavily eroding the burned ground. The result was a sudden high pulse of mud and water roaring down Cold Canyon into the creek; within a few hours the creek flow jumped from 100 cfs to 800 cfs before returning to 100 cfs. This pulse of tons of silt flowed down the Interdam reach down to Lake Solano, deposited into new mud islands and deltas as far down as fishing access 4. Much of the silt was mobilized by the high agricultural flows, but large submerged mud bars are becoming visible as the creek level drops.
The major spawning bed at Deer Sign was buried under several inches of silt at a critical time for the eggs and alevins present in the gravel. We believe much of the 2016 spawn cohort was killed by the siltation of the beds. A recent survey of the adjacent side channel turned up "0" young trout-this had never happened in surveys from previous years. Deer Sign spawning bed is in horrible condition right now and the new spawning season is just around the corner. It is critical for the health of our fishery that we remove silt and weeds from the spawning bed at Deer sign and also at the resort. This is a call for all hands to volunteer to prevent another disastrous spawn.
The end of this month, on October 29, and then during the following weekend on November 6, we are holding work days to clean the gravel spawning beds of silt and weeds at both sites (October 29) followed by gravel supplementation at one site (November 6). We need at least 20 volunteers for the 29th and at least 60 for the gravel augmentation Sign up for the 29th bed cleaning at the link below
If not showing, click on the “Spawning Bed” tab to get to the spreadsheet
https://docs.google.com/
Signup for the November 6 gravel augmentation through our PCT Facebook link, using the “Going” Button; or email or call Steve Karr directly):
