New reservoir in WA

[gpc]

They are planning on building a new reservoir somewhere in WA. The place that they picked is crab creek in grant county. Now there is already a reservoir being fed from crab creek, most of you are familiar with it its called potholes reservoir. This new reservoir will make potholes look like a man made pond. The new res. will wipe out Nunnally lake and Lenice lake, it is also supposed to wipe out a whole bunch water fowl hunting areas along crab creek. The one factor is the steel head than go up crab creek. They know the steel head go up crab creek to spawn, but they dont know how successful the spawn is. They say that once it gets filled it could be like another potholes reservoir. How it was the first 30 years after it was made a panfish haven, as well as other species. So there will be 2 HUGE reservoirs back to back. One full of panfish, ( the new one) and the other full of bass, walleye and trout (potholes). So whats your guys opinion?


If you want more info. on this subject there is a nice article in the newest Fishing & hunting news in WA state

[littleriver]

Very interesting GPC..


If I were to list one lake in this state that is my favorite for all time it would be Nunnally. I've fished Nunnally, Merry, and Lenice a lot over the years, but not too much the last decade or so. Nunnally was always reliable. Just run a big bugger ( green was best) deep behind a fast taper sinking fly line and hold on....

Beautiful lake and beautiful environment. When you time it right and the afternoon is still you can even hear the ordinance from M-1 tanks and artillery pieces being discharged in the distance on the Yakima Firing Range... very comforting.... I just wish there was a better way to get more of that ordinance closer to more Al Quaeda devotees...


I guess, on first pass, my position would be in favor of the reservoir though. The three selective fishery lakes there bring in a lot of traffic but nothing like what you would have if they turned that valley into a big reservoir. Not sure how they are going to manage it so that the bass, WAlleye, and trout stay in Potholes and the panfish stay in the new reservoir but I think panfish will prosper in the new one if they design it right.........................................

[Marc Martyn]

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.fishingandhuntingnews.com/ar ... n/wa02.txt


I highly doubt that it will ever be built. If it is, it will be many, many years down the road. The federal government is broke. However, we could borrow the money from China:cheers:

[gpc]

[quote="littleriver"]Very interesting GPC..


If I were to list one lake in this state that is my favorite for all time it would be Nunnally. I've fished Nunnally, Merry, and Lenice a lot over the years, but not too much the last decade or so. Nunnally was always reliable. Just run a big bugger ( green was best) deep behind a fast taper sinking fly line and hold on....

Beautiful lake and beautiful environment. When you time it right and the afternoon is still you can even hear the ordinance from M-1 tanks and artillery pieces being discharged in the distance on the Yakima Firing Range... very comforting.... I just wish there was a better way to get more of that ordinance closer to more Al Quaeda devotees...


I guess, on first pass, my position would be in favor of the reservoir though. The three selective fishery lakes there bring in a lot of traffic but nothing like what you would have if they turned that valley into a big reservoir. Not sure how they are going to manage it so that the bass, WAlleye, and trout stay in Potholes and the panfish stay in the new reservoir but I think panfish will prosper in the new one if they design it right.........................................
[/quote

I think I said that wrong. They arnt going to manage the new reservoir like this, they were just comparing it to the potholes when it was first built. You know, a very abundant panfish population, with other species as well but not as popular as the panfish. Now the potholes has booming bass, walleye and trout populations but the panfish is are kind of falling off. So they think the new res. will be this all over again, a lot of panfish, but it will take a couple of years, to get a bass or walleye fishery up and going.

But the potholes is improving their panfish population. Mostly in part to Mar Don resort. The are running an underwater enhancement program. They are placing all these boxes all over the reservoir for smaller fish to hide from predators. They was a small article in field and stream about this. Giving the owner of the resort a "hero of conservation" title. They say that after 50 years all the natural sage brush, and trees are all detiriorated, so there is no place for the fish to hide, and well potholes reservoir is over 50 years old. They tried the same project in AZ, and that were the owner of mar don got the idea, and it worked really well. Potholes used to be outstanding fishing in the mid 70 - mid 80, I dont know from experience because that is a little before my time. I was told it was a combination of being over fished and a walleye out break, that killed the fishing, not to mention there not being any cover for the fish.

But when was the last time you were at Nunnully? One of my buddy's has a place in Beverly and he said that lenice is overgrown with willows all around the lake, and there was no bank access, you have to lug a boat down there to fish. Is Nunnully the same way?

Yeah Marc, if they do plan on putting the new reservoir there, its not going to be complete for a VERY, VERY long time

[littleriver]

Federal Government broke??? comon Marc..

Tax receipts are higher than they've ever been and the deficit is going down...

If there is enough political support to put in this reservoir they will find the money and put it in...

[Drewp]

You can bet that if the water could get diverted to farmers, Feds (current administration anyways) wouldn't mind pitching in on the cause. Maybe this is getting off topic.

[Marc Martyn]

Federal Government broke??? comon Marc..

Tax receipts are higher than they've ever been and the deficit is going down...

If there is enough political support to put in this reservoir they will find the money and put it in...

Ya, right.

[littleriver]

I just read the article...

Man.. 3 Billion Dollars..... it can't be costing that much money to move dirt and pour concrete these days...


that's ridiculous for a reservoir that's going to be drawn down annually..

Reservoirs that are drawn down annually just can't sustain healthy fish populations the way ones that stay full can...


Yeah.. I know.. Roosevelt lake does pretty good, but that's a really deep lake... winter drawdowns leave lots of water for fish to hide in..... drawdowns are much dicier when you bring the water down to where it's really shallow and there's no place for the large fish to hide....


a lot of the "mitigation" stuff they're talking about is journalistic hallucination... I've done some jump shooting of Ducks along the crab creek there. I've also nailed a few quail in the cover along the slopes dropping down into the creek. Admittedly, though I've never seen a steelhead working it's way up the creek to spawn.... that may happen, but the bottom line is that Crab Creek is a carp infested mud hole and there really isn't that much there to offer sport fishers or hunters. I think the ATV park just south of Nunnally lake gets more recreational person-days per year than all the hunting and all the fishing in that valley combined.

I say build the dam if it can be justified economically from it's water storage benefits but try to set up management so I doesn't get drained every year.. maybe just every 3 or 4 years instead....

[Bodofish]

In years past I've caught quite a few cutt's in the creek. As for hunting, Chuckars and Geese! Sit on top of Saddle and bang them as they fly over. They come with in about 20' of the ground.
Back to the Dam.

From looking at the other areas up for consideration, the only one that's going to get minimal opposition is Crab Creek. After all who care about a bunch of desert and sage brush. No one uses that area. Except for Fishemen, Hunters, ORV'ers, Hangglider and Paraglider pilots, and just plain old campers.

I guess my point is it wouldn't be in the sights of groups like the Sierra Club or the Wilderness Society. So it's an easy bet for no opposition.

[duckslayer]

I love fishing,but I love hunting ducks and turkeys even more.I am absolutley opposed to this idea.The loss of wildlife habitat if this project goes through far out wieghs anything to be gained by it.This project would really only benefit farmers for irrigation.The crab creek area is used by deer,turkeys,waterfowl, upland birds,and other critters to numerous to list here.Not to mention the loss of public land,which is something there is not enough of in the state of Washington.I really hope people are paying attention here because this would not be the first time public land was taken away from we the people.Once its gone there is no way it will be replaced.This is an absolutley horrible proposal.I just hope you guys consider something other than fishing on this one.I know I am not the only hunter on this site here,and anyone who hunts should be strongly opposed to this.

[jmay]

I have mixed feelings about it, but I know Chelan and Grant Counties PUD's have spent 10's of millions of dollars to relience the dam's they already have. I doubt this will happen in our lifetimes the enviromental impact statement approvals and wetland issues will tie this up for years and years.

[Bodofish]

Let's all hope so. It's a beautiful area.

[littleriver]

Duckslayer makes some really good points..... being both a hunter and a sportfisher I can relate to what he's saying....


and I'm still on the fence on this issue..... all things considered so far I would tend to support it if the bills added up less than a hundred million rather than the 3 billion they are talking about in the link.....


to counter Duckslayer's arguments about "public land" going away I would say that replacing dry land with public accessible fishing water is a good trade.... I think there would be a lot more use per acre as a reservoir than as dry land...

but beyond that there are many, many questions...... I mean if someone were going to pay me $3 billion to build this thing I would be an enthusiastic supporter.... I would hire some contractors and pay them a few 10s of millions to build it and then pocket the balance..... man, what a greedy, self centered capitalist pig I turned out to be....


that aside, what the heck is costing so much????.... I mean, has the development process got so screwed up in this country that when a public project costs 3 billion dollars you figure 2.8 billion for the environmental impact statement (gotta pay off the environmentalists) and .2 billion to build the stupid thing.....

[Marc Martyn]

Hmmmmmmmm.................Maybe a couple of bids came from:

www.halliburton.com/ps/default.aspx?pageid=1