DETERMINING WATER CONDITIONS
BY JOHN BERRY
I guide or fish on my own almost every day. Before I go out, I check water conditions. To accomplish this I have a morning ritual. I get up early and go into my sunroom/office in the back of my house. I turn on the weather channel and boot up my computer. I go to the kitchen and grind fresh Colombian coffee beans and make a large pot of coffee in a French press. Once I have my cup of java, I return to the sun room and settle down at the computer to check on water conditions.
The first website I visit is South West Power Administration’s generation prediction website,
http://www.swpa.gov/generationschedules.aspx . This tells what the generation will be for a given day. I choose the day of the week I want to study. The information for the next day is posted every afternoon around 5:00 PM. On Friday, the prediction for Saturday, Sunday and the next Monday is posted. There are nineteen tail waters posted but I key in on Bull Shoals and Norfork. The prediction is in columnar form and is listed as megawatts generated by hour. On the White, it takes about forty eight megawatts to equal one full generator and on the Norfork it is about forty six megawatts. If the prediction per hour is ninety megawatts, that would be about two full generators. I find this site to be accurate about six days out of seven.
Next I go to the Corps of Engineers current flow website,
http://www.swl-wc.usace.army.mil/reservoirs-o.htm . There are twelve tail waters listed. Once again, I key in on the White River below Bull Shoals and the Norfork. The information is listed in columnar form. The first thing I check is the turbine release given in cubic feet per second (cfs) by hour. One full generator on the White is 3,300 cfs and 3,600 cfs on the Norfork. When we hear that they are running one or more generators we don’t know how much is actually coming through as the can run the generators at full capacity or something much less. I also study this information after I return from fishing to see what flow rates I actually encountered. Over time, I have developed a feel for the actual flows.
I also key in on the elevation. This is the height of the lake in feet above mean sea level. For the White, the top of power pool is 654 feet and 552 for the Norfork. I use this to closely monitor changes in lake level by day or hour. There is a column titled tail water. This is the height of the river below the dam in feet above mean sea level. I do not use this information.
Finally there is a column titled generation which is given in megawatts generated per hour. This is the place to compare actual generation to the prediction.
This site is very reliable. It is computer generated and constantly updated. There is a two hour delay between actual and posted information.
The next sites I visit are
http://www.swl-wc.usace.army.mil/WCDS/plots/WEB/bul.htm for the White river and
http://www.swl-wc.usace.army.mil/WCDS/plots/WEB/nor.htm for the Norfork. These provide a wealth of information in graphic format for the past seven days. The first graph is precipitation. This lets me know how much rain we received and gives me a quick reference for the effect on lake levels.
The next graph is of lake elevation in feet above mean sea level. By referring to this graph I can quickly determine how much and how fast the lake levels are rising or falling. Below this is tailwater which gives the river level in feet above mean sea level. Once again I do not use this information.
The next two graphs are generation expressed in megawatts per hour and flow in cubic feet per second. These graphs look almost identical. From them I can quickly identify patterns in flow rates. Are they turning it off every night and turning it back on at noon? Once again this site is computer generated and very reliable and there is about a two hour lag between actual and reported data.
The next step is to call the Bull Shoals Powerhouse, (870) 431-5311 which controls generation on The White and Norfork Rivers. They will tell you the lake levels, how many generators are on and when they started. They will also tell you when previous generation ceased. The problem is that the number of generators on does not really tell you how much water is coming through the turbines. The amount of generation can vary widely during the day and the report will be the same. While this information can be timely, there is a reliability problem. I have had many personal instances where I called the powerhouse and the recording had not been updated. As a result I have come to rely more on the websites listed above.
All of these sources still do not tell you everything you need to know. You also need direct observation. I will often go the four blocks from my house in Cotter to look at the White River to determine water conditions. There are things that affect the rivers that are not that monitored. The river level could rise significantly due to runoff from rainfall. That same runoff could severely stain the river. Ecological disasters like the debacle at Norfork Overlook Estates could affect water clarity. Frequently after a period of low water, trash can be washed down stream with rising water. Looking at the water can tell you a lot.
Take all of these tools and you can enhance your understanding of water conditions. This can help you predict the best place and time to go fishing.
John Berry
(870) 435-2169
[email protected]www.berrybrothersguides.com
