30 Jun 2009 /
C.S.M.P. Work
After assessing my location to potential testing sites and with the information provided by Wendy B. I chose a site within fifteen minutes driving from my doorstep (if I make the street lights). The site is on a stream that the MPCA has never received data from, is close to home and has a few albeit small trout but trout to watch just the same. Sites are usually at road crossings but they don’t have to be and because the three road crossings that were potential options all turned out to be shallow skinny riffles with no depth or fish for that matter I chose this site which is very close to the road that follows the stream.
Once onsite I took a visual assessment of the water and collected a sample from mid depth without kicking up sediment and poured the contents into the provided transparency tube. The MPCA sends a standard 60cm tube but for situations like mine where the water stays clear they can send a 100cm tube, I’ll be looking into this. I took a water temp and finished the data collection before collecting most of the trash along the roadside. I removed a large plastic fertilizer bag from the stream while picking rocks to find bugs. Picking rocks from the riffles upstream of the site location I found a large amount of mayfly nymphs in there very early instars, its like the streams around here go void of nymphs for a small time before they grow.
I will be visiting this place often so I will get a chance to get to know the fish that live near the wall. Close to twenty brown trout live in the deeper water near the concrete wall that gives me my reference point for the stream level measurement and although they are small they are still very fun to watch. I creep up from behind the concrete wall and peer over, they never see me coming, from this vantage point I can see them picking items from the drift. Trout, and fish in general for that matter, are just plain cool to look at.
The potential to catch one of these fish is there but the water is crystal clear and I have a feeling will be so most of the time, one reason to stay on top of rain events to get transparency data right away.
Tags: MPCA, Stream Monitoring, The Winona Fly Factory, Volunteer Work, Water Quality
Fished the afternoon, caught some sporadic hatching Light Hendricksons. The plan was to nymph an area that I have been observing during this hatch but to my dismay I found I had company and not the kind with a fly rod. Interesting how the cattle grazing near the one spot caused it to muddy the entire time they were present and only downstream for a hundred yards, after that it cleaned right up. Fishing in a place where the stream frequently runs through a pasture, S.E. Minnesota farmers are in a unique position to affect the streams with the amount of grazing time they allow near the streams.
The cattle disrupt the stream causing the water transparency to decrease, if this happens enough it can affect the life in the stream by limiting the amount of sunlight able to penetrate the water. Also cattle can erode the streamside by eating and trampling the vegitation, the root structures provide strenght during rain events to help soak up large amounts of water so that the stream doesn’t get dumped on and to provide stability to the banks so they don’t erode as easily when significant rain fall occurs.
Although I didn’t fish for very long it stuck in my mind how many miles of S.E. MN trout stream run through pastures and if farmers are careless and allow cattle to constantly graze, a stream can be negatively affected, some grazing is fine but when they are allowed to stay for too long the stream and the life in it can suffer. Rotational grazing is an idea in the works but it takes effort on the part of the farmer, money to purchase the fencing and time to actually move the cattle so I can see how it might not happen as often as it should. One thing we might do is petition the state legislator to use some of the money set aside from the recently passed Constitutional Amendment to subsidize the cost of making this happen more often.
I moved on and found myself driving for a ways before stopping. Fished to a few rising trout and caught a few but I perhaps should have spent more time nymphing rather than concentrating on getting the perfect drift to entice picky trout. Something to think about next time I see the splash from a rising trout. I did get the opportunity to check out a new stream and the images say it all.
Tags: Brown Trout, Fly Fishing, Rotational Grazing, The Winona Fly Factory, Trout Stream, Water Quality
After assessing my location to potential testing sites and with the information provided by Wendy B. I chose a site within fifteen minutes driving from my doorstep (if I make the street lights). The site is on a stream that the MPCA has never received data from, is close to home and has a few albeit small trout but trout to watch just the same. Sites are usually at road crossings but they don’t have to be and because the three road crossings that were potential options all turned out to be shallow skinny riffles with no depth or fish for that matter I chose this site which is very close to the road that follows the stream.
Once onsite I took a visual assessment of the water and collected a sample from mid depth without kicking up sediment and poured the contents into the provided transparency tube. The MPCA sends a standard 60cm tube but for situations like mine where the water stays clear they can send a 100cm tube, I’ll be looking into this. I took a water temp and finished the data collection before collecting most of the trash along the roadside. I removed a large plastic fertilizer bag from the stream while picking rocks to find bugs. Picking rocks from the riffles upstream of the site location I found a large amount of mayfly nymphs in there very early instars, its like the streams around here go void of nymphs for a small time before they grow. 
