Thread: Running water at Smithville

Falling water will give em lock jaw for sure!

The dock manager at Camp Branch said that the Corp was drawing the lake down by TWO feet in preparation for winter (whatever that means) So it looks like we are pretty well up the proverbial poop creek until they get through playing in the water. The phone no. at C.B. marina is 816 407 3420 if you wanna call ahead to save the drive. Fish On

The water level management plan calls for drawing the lake down 2 feet below normal pool begining Decemebr 15. This allows some buffer to hold spring rains before releases have to be made then. The lake is currently 1.5 feet below normal so there won't be much let out. The way Smithville was designed, once the lake reaches 4 feet above normal releases must be made. By giving us the 2 foot below normal drop, the corps is helping us maintain water levels steady to slightly rising during the spawn most years. The daily lake conditions can be found at http://www.nwk.usace.army.mil/Locati...formation.aspx. The 8 cubic feet/sec is baseline flow to keep the Little Platte River below the dam from drying up. Unless they haven't updated the site, they are just releasing baseline flow. The only time the outflow is completely closed is during flooding downstream or when they need to inspect or work on the water structure. There is usually some flow through.

Thanks, Jake...I was wondering what the baseline flow is.

The daily info page must not be updated regularly. I keep up to date on the 8 day page, its a little harder to read, but shows more history of flows and water level. Here's a link http://www.nwd-mr.usace.army.mil/rcc/nwk/7daylak3.txt. Looks like they are reducing flow from 600 cfs at a little above the 2 foot low mark.

Thanks Frogy, I'd lost that link. They'll be backing it down to baseline soon I bet. It's amazing how much bank is exposed at a 2 foot drawdown. We always get comments about them drawing the lake down 5 feet or more, but that's only happened once. January 1, 1993 was the lowest the lake was ever drawn down. It was down 5 feet for some repairs. Ironically, later that same year was the highest the lake has ever gotten at 11 feet above normal. The next highest year was 2001 or 2002 at 7 feet high. The drawdown is one of the single best management strategies we've done to improve fishing at the lake. Being able to avoid releasing lots of water during the spawn most years has increased shad production significantly. Shad drive the system in a large reservoir. We've produced good shad hatches almost every year since 2002.

Originally Posted by MOfishmgr

We've produced good shad hatches almost every year since 2002.

And we are grateful!! It may not make fishing any easier, but we have some nice fat, healthy fish

think they shut water off yesterday, been trapping the platte and half my traps were under 3 ft of water Platte is back to normal today and I found all my traps except 1 sandbar changed,