I'm still playing with Tonka trucks...they're just a little bigger these days!
A few years back, I was blessed with having the world’s greatest job…I was hired as a consultant to a spawning bed restoration project on the Stanislaus River in California.
My responsibilities: Direct two front loaders on where to dump gravel and boulders. Not only was the pay outstanding, but taking a thrashed river and making it pristine for Chinook and trout was awfully good for the soul! And, let’s be honest here, driving those big tractors around was pretty fun too! Here are some before and after pix…
We basically took a 2-mile stretch of river that was void of gravel and made it new again. We added hundreds of 2- to 7-ton boulders and zillions of tons of gravel. When it was all said and done, that section of the Stanni had 33 new spawning riffles and some amazing new flood plain and side channels. It was awesome…it’s not every day you get to “buld” a river. Here’s a side-channel before we started working on it…
Before: Carp water at best...
And here’s how she looked when we finished…
Now, that's what I'm talking about!
Find plenty more pix of the work and the full story at the following: STANISLAUS RESTORATION PIX And more HERE
Tyler Duncan says
Fished that river two days ago. Now we need to figure something out to do about the ANS, specifically the New Zealand Mudsnails. The river is covered in these things. Besides the escargot, the river was nice and the fishing was good too.
don brier says
Nice job JD! I enjoyed your column on this a while back also.
Heres some history for you from a fast becoming Old Fart celebrating his 53rd birthday today. The stretch of the Stan you restored was dredged out by my Great Grandfather and Grandfather in the late 1930’s until the Government shut the business down during WWII. I sincerely apologize for their unknowing oversight of the environmental destruction they induced by not restoring the riverbed when they passed through.
Despite this destruction however, I can remember standing on the Orange Blossom Bridge in the mid to late 60’s looking down and the Salmon were so numerous it looked like you could walk across their backs. Back then the Stan was an unbelievable warmwater fishery. The Bluegill, Largemouth, Bullheads and Channel Cat fishing was out of this world. It had incredible seasonal Shad and Striper runs along with the Fall Salmon runs. I spent most of my childhood summer days satisfying my addiction by abusing those poor fish daily with my trusty Zebco Combo and in later years my then state of the art Garcia-Mitchell 300.
I can personally attest to the fact that back then that “Carp water” you refered to held some 40 pound plus trophy Black Goldfish. I’ll save this for another story sometime.
Skip forward to the late 70’s. When New Melones was filled and the downstream runoff was taken from the bottom of the reservoir the River’s Ecosystem changed drastically. For the most part the warmwater species went out as the water temps rarely topped the mid 50’s. Similar to the Lower Sacramento River following the Shast Dam siphon installation the River became a trout fishery. 20 inch plus Rainbows are now caught regularly.
Unfortunately the Salmon population dwindled. The controversial cause of the demise will be argued for many decades to come. Most of the reasons I have heard are plausible and contributing. Disturbingly the common denominator for the majority of these reasons is human intervention.
Ironically the best thing we can do now is intervene further to make good our mistakes. Participating in the various conservation and/or environmental movements is crucial. Lobbying and voting as appropriate for ballot measures to restore, protect and preserve our fisheries is required of all of us.
Thank You JD for your contributions and all of us should take example follow suit.
fishbird says
JD thats so cool i think my smile just grew !!!!! we’re not worthy ,we’re not worthy !!!!
ken says
THATS HOW YOU THROW YOUR WIEGHT AROUND…
dan.lizardo says
the fish gods will be looking down at you in a very favorable way!!! good job lucky you.. hiouch!!!
"Smitty" says
WOW! Your title says it all. Thanks JD!
Erik Boehm says
must of been fun thank you
Matt Warner says
Hey JD,
How can we get involved in these restoration projects? I am in the Yuba City area and I’m sure we could spend some time on these rivers and feeder streams.
I would love to help.
Matt
Tim says
How did the spawning area get ruined in the first place? I think many places in the state need restoration like this. Good work JD.
JD says
Hey Tim, pretty much the classic story: Dams upriver stopped all new gravel from washing downstream. After many years of high water, the gravel that was in the stream either gets blown out or impacted and becomes like concrete — and thus the fish can’t use it.
Plus, being dam controlled, the river can’t flood like it needs to in the winter and becomes very straight and channelized. What you end up with is a straight river with no flood plain and silt, instead of gravel, for a bed.
Jeremiah says
When drifting rivers like the Smith where you can actually hear the gravel getting pushed along the bottom (kind of sounds like bacon sizzling) it’s easy to understand how quickly the gravel can get depleted in dammed rivers.
JD says
Exactly…sounds pretty loud on a pushy day when you’re in an aluminum boat. Not so much on the dammed up rivers!
Tim says
Thanks for the explanation, I would have never figured that on out. Those dams that improve our lives wreak havoc on the streambeds. No place for the silt to go except over the existing gravel and no introduction of upstream gravel, because of the dam.