Post-flood
assessment of the fish in the Big Thompson
With U.S. 34
reopening, the club should be able to see for ourselves what it’s now like from
Drake east to Loveland. Expect to find some serious channelization
and stream stabilization, and potential conflicts to come as decisions are made
on restoration of the river, one of Colorado’s best known trout waters.
Ben Swigle, this
region’s aquatic biologist, described the division’s electroshock survey
results on the Big Thompson at the Nov. 20 meeting of Rocky Mountain Flycasters
in Fort Collins. Results in the stream section just below Olympus
Dam, which looked dismal immediately after the July 14 flash flood,
“show us that the trout population in that area is in good shape,” Ben
says. All year classes for rainbows were found in numbers comparable
to previous surveys, and they even found two walleye, presumably washed out of
Lake Estes.
Go downstream two
miles “and it’s not pretty,” but the fishing should be okay, he
says. Even four miles downstream, division staff shocked enough fish
to estimate about 4,000 trout per stream mile, comparable to surveys in 2008.
The handicap pier on
the river was destroyed, though. And go further east around Drake
and the extraordinary construction efforts to restore travel on U.S. 34 make
the Big Thompson has the river resembling more of an irrigation ditch that a wild
river Ben reports. In the Narrows area just west of Loveland, the
once-healthy portion of the river has been temporily channelized. Around
Glade Park, where the state made major habitat improvements in 2009 to help
fishing, the surveys identified a substancial decline of the brown trout
population with this, section of the river suffering major damage
.jpg)
