Small Streams 9-8-12

It’s a tough time of year for fish in many of our smallest streams. We visited Jackknife Creek with 2-weight rods a few days ago, and became concerned with the low water we saw there.  The creek has a large drainage, but like so many smaller streams the dry, warm summer has limited surface water throughout the drainage. We managed to catch some beautifully colored cutts, but only in deeper runs and holes having water flowing through.  We originally intended to fish beaver ponds along the creek.  But these hosted huge algae blooms, thus fish were absent because of lowered dissolved oxygen.  Concerned that we would be stressing fish, we ended our fishing early.    Such an experience can be expected now on many of our smaller streams at the end of this dry summer.  Let’s hope for a good snow winter followed by a summer with more precipitation than this one to give trout populations better living conditions next year.