Long time readers and friends have surely noticed that our posting here on Chi Wulff has slowed significantly of late.
Life has a way of serving up curve balls now and again, and over the past several months we’ve been presented with a most interesting business opportunity, one of those elusive, once in a lifetime type opportunities that we all imagine might lurk around the next corner but are damned hard to actually pin down in real life.
This has ended up forcing an all hands on deck type mustering of available resources; as much as we’ve loved ChiWulff over the years, there’s just not enough time to get ‘er done.
We’ll be placing ChiWulff in a holding pattern here for a few months, with the intent of bringing her back to life when the winter thaw starts shaking the shackles off winter back home in Montana next spring.
You’ve probably heard by now that flows on the Upper Madison out of Hebgen dropped suddenly yesterday as per the flow graph above, stranding a large number of fish in dewatered side channels and exposing redds.
There was a bit of confusion yesterday after an initial call for volunteers to bring buckets and rescue stranded fish was rescinded due to concerns that flows could suddenly increase and that walking on the exposed stream beds could damage redds.
The MGTU sent out the message below last night calling for volunteers to attempt a fish rescue this morning, suggesting (not in any way confirmed as of 7 this morning) that the issues might not be easily repaired at the dam(n) outflow.
Flows at the next reporting station downstream (Cameron, the final image below) suggest there are obvious low flow issues – critical ones – below Quake as well.
The Annual Utah Stream Access Coalition online auction opens tomorrow, and from their auction site here it looks like they’ve arranged a great array of trips, gear, and other goods for sale this year. Help USAC continue to fight the good fight and bid this year…
The metabolically flexible fly fisher and hunter can go places and do things no mere mortal would even ponder. Getting there is far easier than you'd think; get started today.
