Definitely a correlation to the river level, IMO. It has been averaging 350cfs when its typically about 1500-200cfs. Made the striper fishing in the river a lot more difficult but all the fish are fat and healthy.
Seeing a big up/down trend this yr. Could this be why some people have seen the bite die off a little over the past week??? Some days it appears the DO is rising or falling a whole point from 3.5 to 4.5. Or could this be caused by the super moon we are having??? It seems to be jumping the most during as we reach the complete full moon.
“All fisherman lie. And if they say otherwise, then they’re lying”
Highly doubt that the moon has anything to do with DO levels. Haha. More likely it is there generation schedule as you are looking at the bottom readings. Do you get a copy of the oxygen depth profile from the towers? They give a O2 profile every foot. You can really see the squeeze later this month and really in august.
Thats the weird part. They havent generated aanything over 715CFS in the last 2 weeks. Maybe even 3 weeks. (This has really affected the river bite as well). From what we gathered last year this “bottom” reading is at a depth of 70 or 80’ (where they pull water out of the lake to generate) and not the actual bottom of the lake.
“All fisherman lie. And if they say otherwise, then they’re lying”
Rick, I thought so too, but I stopped by USGS office over off Greystone Blvd last year and asked them where that reading was coming from. I forget exactly, but it was somewhere in the 80 ft range at full pool.
I remember posting after I talked to them, I’ll find it.
I know it has to be getting close to dropping soon. The surface temp is reading almost 90 degrees in some of shallows and 86 in the big water as of yesterday. Hopefully the polar vortex will save us!
Really? Polar vortices are weaker during summer and strongest during winter. Why would you think that Polar Vortices would impact the oxygen levels in Lake Murray?
Rick, was just making a joke about the fall in temp’s this week.The weather guys had such a big time with it over the winter and I had heard one of them mention it again the other day that it seemed funny to me. Definately no science there with me!
Funny you mention that because a meteorologist was on the news this morning discussing polar vortexes. Many are falsely calling the cold front that is sweeping down a polar vortex. It is really just a big low pressure that is related to the typhoon that hit japan. But he did show a typical polar vortex, it is supposed to be a tight circle at the poles. With the warming of the poles they are unstable and big sections of cold polar air are breaking off and pushing south. He said meteorologists fear it is going to have a major impact on our climate. It is the cause of the drought in the west and the massive cold snaps last winter. Sorry for rambling, I just find things like this interesting. And it certainly could effect our fishing.
As of last weekend no. And from the reports on wed I would still say no. Plus with this polar vortex we had thus week doubt it will for a little while… knock on wood but this could be an easy summer on our fishery. The longer it takes the better it is for the fish.
Also the shorter the time period it is in place the weaker the turnover will be putting less stress on the fish during the turnover
“All fisherman lie. And if they say otherwise, then they’re lying”
This week I also checked water temps just for comparison. Not gonna post graphs or anything but as of right now there is a fairly large difference (by water temp standards) between this/last yr. This is prob why we haven’t seen a thermocline yet.
2014 Top temp Bot temp
82.4 / 56.3
2013 Top temp Bot temp
85.6 / 60.8
This week 2013
Current level 2014. Think the sensor must have been throwing inaccurate reading or something. (Look back at last week and the sensor was jumping all over the chart) sometimes more than a whole point in a very short period of time. Either way it is back on and reading seem to be a little more normal
“All fisherman lie. And if they say otherwise, then they’re lying”
This was the first week in a long time SCEG actually ran water in the saluda. They turned it on for a real short period on wed then turned on again thurs and let it run through this morning. (Striper should be on fire this weekend down there). Also water temps are creeping back up. Overall compared to last year we are looking pretty good.
“All fisherman lie. And if they say otherwise, then they’re lying”
Last year we had a significant amount of rainfall and only had a handfull of days that were above 90 degrees. We had more days in June above 90 than we did all last summer and not nearly the rainfall.
The rainfall is what made it tough on us last year almost causing a kill. The lake was rising so fast SCEG had to run water like crazy sucking the DO out of the lake. Here is the waterflow graphs from last yr this yr. Crazy
Last yr
This year
“All fisherman lie. And if they say otherwise, then they’re lying”
I was out last night and the surface temp was down to 79* in the big pool. Fish were thick up on a 25’ hump. The were not interested in biting but they were there. Not typical for early august, fish should be in good shape this year.
