The Morning News outdoor section has moved back to Thursdays and in a new format. Read my column from yesterday. The video referred in the column is in the blog post below.

I talked to Bruce Darr last night. He said he and a friend had been able to see the damage at the bath house at Campground C. The back wall is pushed out as well as the roof being removed, and there is a lot of damage in the campground to the pavillion structures.

© 2008, Scott Branyan

My neighbor Paul Martin and I today checked out Beaver tailwater from the dam to Bertrand access. Here’s a video blog on what we found on this stretch of Arkansas’ White River.

To save the file to your computer for larger viewing or for viewing on your portable device, right click “Save Target as” here.

© 2008, Scott Branyan

Arkansas Game and Fish Commission announced today it has been trying to eradicate some northern snakehead fish found in Lee county near Brinkley.

http://www.agfc.com/news/current-news.aspx?newsID=59

A report in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette today said the fish originally came to Arkansas in 2000 by way of Jack Dunn’s Fish Farm in Monroe. Dunn, who died Feb. 23, intended to raise the fish commercially. He was advised by a professional aquaculturist to eradicate them. The fish was banned from Arkansas and also banned from importation nationally in 2002.

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Sports/224322/

Of concern is that the fish may have spread into the lower White River with the recent flooding. The bayou areas of the lower White are a similar environment to the snakehead’s native Asian range.

Here’s a forum discussion with some photos:
http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=52283&mid=367517

The northern snakehead (an invasive species) is similar to the native bowfin of Arkansas but is a voracious predator. Biologists are concerned it will have an impact on other native species such as black bass and crappie. Here is a link to identifying both species.

http://www.agfc.com/!userfiles/pdfs/agfc_snakehead_identification.pdf

© 2008, Scott Branyan

Well, after a sweep of tornados across Arkansas (February 5), three major flood events this spring (March 19-20, April 9-10, April 24-25) and flood gates having been open on four of the five White River dams (some several times), most of us are probably wondering what lies ahead for the next month.

Our weather pattern has included a La Nina this spring and cold fronts which keep coming down from Canada and energizing the atmosphere leading to severe weather and heavy rains. Hopefully, as things finally begin to warm up in May, we will see that pattern broken and rains will diminish. But we stand a good chance of decent rains on through June just looking at the climatology patterns from years past.

Everything hinges on rainfall.

What we need is for things to stabilize, and that may not happen for another month or so.

I can promise everyone high water on the lakes and tailwaters through Labor Day and probably a little beyond. In the late April flood of 2004, it was the 1st of October before Bull Shoals reservoir was back to normal managed lake level. Our days of dead low water on the tailwaters will turn out to be very few this year and also probably next year, since the La Ninas tend to run in 2-3 year cycles.

Until the Fourth of July, I would still plan eveything on a tenative basis and be prepared to take advantage of any last minute opportunities. I will try to keep everyone advised through the river report page and newsletter.

I expect a cooler summer this year as the ground moisture will keep the weather cooler. Hopefully this will make for some fine weather and fishing throughout the entire summer.

© 2008, Scott Branyan

[Version 3 - 4/30/08]

I was suppose to be guiding on Bull Shoals tailwater a second day today, but with the rain last night and Beaver and Table Rock opening up flood gates in the wee hours of the morning, I suspected the Corps might also open the flood gates at Bull Shoals dam as the lake level was starting to rise. We called off the trip.

On the way home, my customers and I stopped off at Beaver dam to see the spillway releases. I heard then that the Corps would be opening Bull Shoals gates at noon. So, we made a good call with the weather and the possibility of flood gate releases.

Here’s my first attempt at a video blog. I hope to make more of these available down the road. Let me know what you think.

© 2008, Scott Branyan

Dennis McCarty and I floated from the dam to Rim Shoals April 16th while the Corps was running all 8 generators and still had the flood gates open a few inches. Flows were around 27,000 cfs. The trip which is about 24 miles took us 2-1/2 hours. I was motoring just barely faster than the current.

Here’s the time-lapsed video (34MB Windows Media file):

Hard to see on the video are things of interest along the bank, such as dogwoods and redbuds, water up close to building foundations and even some of the new construction going on, the bee-tree, turkeys taking a dust bath. The area below the Cotter bridges where the boat spins 360-degrees three times is where the Gassville tornado crossed the White River before heading into town on February 6th.

© 2008, Scott Branyan

Arkansas Game and Fish Commission will hold their annual public fishing regulation meetings in May.

http://www.agfc.com/news/current-news.aspx?newsID=56

These are the traditional public input meetings and are not the same as the White River tailwater trout management plan meetings. These provide anglers a chance for a more individual form of input.

© 2008, Scott Branyan

If you missed seeing the flood gates open at Bull Shoals dam, here’s some video of the event from Monday, April 14th.

© 2008, Scott Branyan

The link to my Friday Morning News article is here.

© 2008, Scott Branyan

I’ll enter this as a blog entry so it can hang around for a while.

For background, see the Little Rock National Weather Service report of the flooding for April 8-10.

My day today began at 1:30 a.m. My son Paul came in the bedroom and shouted my neighbor’s pole barn had just been hit by lightning and was in flames.

We had watched storm coverage on the TV of the storms in Oklahoma and Ft. Smith for most of the evening and saw the extreme lightning they had along with the hail and tornados.

I ran to the phone and called my neighbor, Bill. “I’ll be right there!” was his curt reply before an abrupt click on the other end. Then I called 911. I got out to the barn just as Bill was arriving. His horse trailer was parked back close to it and was smoldering. He hitched it up and pulled it forward while another neighbor had a hose ready by that time. I played firefighter and was able to get the trailer fire out and cooled down as the fire truck arrived.

The barn was a total loss but most of Bill’s animals are OK–two dogs, three horses, a few goats, calves, chickens and all but one of his lavender guineas. For the next two hours I stood in the rain watching, offering help to Bill, and feeling pretty useless.

So I awoke sleep deprived, smelling smoke in my nostrils and with a headache this morning. I checked the dam reports, and darn they had flood gates on at Norfork dam. I needed some photos of Norfork with flood gates open. In the meantime, our cable internet was out overnight. I fixed bacon, eggs and fresh pressed gourmet coffee (black!) while trying to figure out if I could send out a newsletter about the flood gates on my PDA. Success. Boy, can I multi-task!

On the way over on 412, the War Eagle, Kings, and Osage were all out of their banks, wide and within a few feet of the bridges. Rather scary looking. I heard Beaver had opened gates to 5-feet and Table Rock was increasing flood gate releases also. I was able to return a few phone calls and talked with a friend that has a cabin on Bull Shoals tailwater about be flooded for a second time.

I arrived at the dam just as they had raised the gates to 6-feet with about 82,000 cfs (including the release from both generators) flowing down the river. One of the persons at the dam said they had just turned on 8 generators at Bull Shoals. I got the photos and went to Buffalo City to get a snap shot of the Buffalo backing up the White again. The river was coming up to the top of the first rise on the access road. Deja Vue.

I stopped in and visited with Gary Flippin at Rim before heading home. By around 6:00 p.m. the Osage was back in its banks, but not the Kings nor the War Eagle although they had dropped several feet.

This has turned out to be a worse case scenario this year with the flooding still downstream and Norfork having to open record gates and the Buffalo flooding again. On the plus side, the storm threat and rain moved out of the area early but only after it dumped 2-5 inches of widespread rains.

Not a day I want to repeat, but I did manage a couple of good photos. See the 2008 photo gallery.

© 2008, Scott Branyan