Progress?

[spinner1]

Many years ago my father showed me this old bridge ruins hole. It has always produced for me through the years. I remember a big fat 18 incher the first time I fished it back in 1966.

Through the years I have shared my excellent hole with many folks.


John Armstrong caught this nice early season brown on a thin mint in this wonderful hole.

Last year I saw some construction equipment out in the field near the hole. It was the WDNR and they were "fixing" the stream on request of the landowner.

Earlier this year I limped out to this hole and it nearly made me cry. The fixing entailed taking every tree off the bank and putting in giant boulders and lots of loose gravel.

I sent a friend to fish it yesterday and the boulders have been silted in and the hole no longer exists.

Good job fixing this stream "NOT"

[Grn Mt Man]

Len,

And how many of those "restoration" ex-spurts went to stream upgrading school? Had a similar great (NOT!) project in my area a few years ago. They decided to do something about "flood control" etc. so they took a beautiful stretch of river and "channeled" it. They removed all the trees along the banks and took all the ones out of the water along with any other good hidey-holes that were there. They then proceeded to straighten the river bed and had no boulders etc. left there either. When the next big rains came the water shot through there like a rocket and the folks downstream from the "improvement" got nailed. Later on they came back and at least put some trees and stream bank restoration in place for what little good that did.

[philip43]

Here in NY the State folks made a surprising discovery. Channeling a stream is the worst sort of flood control. Channels allow flood water to pick up speed and when it runs into debris or a turn it will do a lot more flooding and damage. It seems counter intuitive!!
Allowing trees, bushes and water plants to grow on streams and putting in rip-rap on rivers actually reduces flood damage. That lesson was learned when Hurricane Sandy went through the Catskill Mountains a few years ago. NY State has had classes for contractors, to teach them how to repair flood damage without "channeling" streams. Adios Philip43