Monday afternoon I went over to the park for about a half an hour of fishing on the Little Harpeth. This is a small river but not it is just a trickle. I do not exagerate to say that some bathtub fawcets could put out the same flow rate. I saw the bottom of a pool that I have never seen the bottom of before. The water is LOW.
The leaves are piling up. One pool was so covered that it could not be fished even with bait and a spinning rod. The water is being stained by all of the tannins coming off of the leaves. The heavy leaf cover will be blocking oxygen tranfer from the air. Soon the leaves will be decaying and robbing even more oxygen from the water. I am through fishing this drainage until we get rain. The fish seemed too lethargic.
Now I am worried about a fish kill. I might talk to the park rangers about wading out an pulling some of the leaves off of the water. This is especially worrying because the Little Harpeth is just recovering from a series of pollution spills a few years ago. Another couple of good years and the smallmouth fishng could be excellent.
Does anyone have any ideas to help? We really need some rain around here. I think that our October was the driest on record, with about 5 mm of rain.
Ed
P.S. Yes Betty, there really were two hatches coming off of the same pool at the same time.

[This message has been edited by EdD (edited 04 November 2005).]

[This message has been edited by EdD (edited 04 November 2005).]