Let Us Up! We’ve Had Enough!
Our phones went off in the middle of the night last night. Some tornado watch, or warning blaring that loud siren, and then the rain comes yet again.
We’ve dodged all bullets here in Denton proper, and the Airstream over in a much more exposed Cottondale, Texas, has somehow made it this far without a single new hail ding. How much luck does one person deserve, I wonder? And I lose plenty of sleep these nights.
Needless to say, enough rain already. Attached is a snapshot of the Trinity River basin’s lakes. They stop counting at 100-percent, which is just so … Texas Governmental.
I was talking to a friend this morning here in Denton, and he put it best, “We’ve gone from a cleansing rain,” to mold, mildew and rot. He won’t even stay at his Texoma lakehouse. “Imagine all those septic tanks! They’ve got problems big time, and the fire ants? They’re insane.”
Yup, I think we’ve gone beyond the pale now. There is no silver lining right now, but I expect one, gold, to appear later this summer. That is then though, and this is now. Debris, and even trees and logs from the five years of drought? It’s all over the lakes here. And even if you can’t see it, it’s moving in solid layers just below the surface (I do love new electronics). We’re talking acres, and acres of debris. There are openings, but can you see the debris? No? Then we certainly cannot see the openings in those islands of despair.
WHAT’S A POOR BOY TO DO? — DAM IT
What to do? Well, I toyed with (or she toyed with me), a short-nose gar that went about 40-inches – below the Ray Roberts Dam yesterday afternoon. And there are plenty of them around. The trick is how to actually get a line on one. I find gar to be about as frustrating as any fish we have around here. They’ll nip and jab at flies as if to tease me, and say, “Get that thing out of here!” If those parks along the Greenbelt reopen in a week, it will be one of the best floats, on kayak at the current CFS, in many years. Be sure to take advantage of that. I run a shuttle service that takes ALL THE WORK out of doing the Greenbelt float – www.kayakshuttleservice.com
There is also the Denison Dam to contend with. These conditions lead to a good year of striper action on fly below that dam in 2007-2008, and there’s water coming out of there right now. HOWEVER, the water was so high back then, you’ll remember, that it also went over the spillway. And there’s the comparison. If it goes over the spillway, it’s epic. Once they close this thing down and generate on an electrical basis, there will be windows of opportunity, as the fish feed in earnest for the first half-hour of the release.
Be sure to SEARCH the site for that Denison Dam information. I can’t believe I haven’t gotten around to converting all articles over to subscription yet, but it has been a heck of a year in so many ways.
Category: Adventure, Science and Environmental, Zebra Mussels
