Category Archives: Salmon

Boating, Events, Fish, History, Rafting, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Folsom Lake level reaches important milestone

Sunday Jan. 31 will be remembered as the day Folsom Lake recovered.

In less than two months, Folsom Lake has gone from the lowest level in its 60-year history to above average for this time of year.

According to preliminary data from the California Department of Water Resources, Folsom Lake rose from below average to above average sometime between 4 and 5 a.m. Sunday.

As of 5 a.m., Folsom Lake held 507,193 acre feet (AF) of water. The average for Jan. 31 is 506,849 AF.

An acre foot of water will supply the average household for a year.

On Sunday morning, the lake level stood at 418 feet above sea level, roughly 70 feet higher than when it bottomed out on Dec. 4 with just 135,561 AF.

Like it or not, Folsom Lake will likely soon shift roles from water storage to flood control.

More at News10.net >>>

Boating, Fish, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Speed restrictions dropped as Folsom Lake levels rise

Folsom Lake surpassed the 400-foot elevation mark Monday, allowing park rangers to drop the 5 mph speed limit at the popular boating area.

The reservoir was sitting at 403 feet as of 3 a.m. Tuesday and continued to rise as runoff from recent storms poured down the North, Middle and South Forks of the American River.

For the past week, the lake was rising an average of two feet per day, according to the California Data Exchange.

The 5 mph speed limit was implemented on July 13 when the lake dropped below 400 feet, cutting the summer recreation season short.

More at KCRA.com >>>

Bike Trail, Boating, Fish, Rafting, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Thanks El Niño! 44-foot rise of Folsom Lake offers hope for California’s worst ever drought

California lake levels are rising as fast as the stock market is falling, with Folsom Lake east of Sacramento rising an astonishing 44 feet in just over a month and Lake Oroville, the second most expansive water storage facility in the state rising another 20 feet.

Early December saw Folsom Lake, just off Highway 50 on the way up to South Lake Tahoe, dwindle to the hydrological equivalent of a mud puddle.

It reached its lowest levels since they started filling it up after building the dam of around 349 feet above sea level.

Today, it has risen over 44 feet to just under 393 feet above sea level.

More at SFGate.com >>>

Boating, Fish, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Drought-ravaged Folsom Lake rises 28.5 feet in just one month

 

Water-starved Folsom Lake is beginning to slowly fill up and recover from its lowest water levels ever.

The state’s ninth-largest reservoir, the main water source for the sprawling Sacramento suburbs, shrank to a mere 135,561 acre feet on Dec. 4, 2015. The previous lowest level at Folsom was 140,600 acre feet, recorded during the 1976–77 drought. An acre foot is enough water to flood an acre of land under a foot of water, and roughly the amount required by a family of four over a year.

With the recent rains, Folsom’s water level has risen 28.5 feet and the reservoir is now holding 246,497 acre feet of water.
“The lake continues to slowly rise,” Karl Swanberg, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Sacramento, said in an interview. “While this current storm isn’t dropping a lot of rain on Folsom, we’re getting runoff from the Sierra from past storms and some snow melt.”

The Central Sierra snow pack is at 107 percent of average and the American River, which feeds into Folsom, travels through these mountains.

That said, Swanberg adds the lake is still only at 25 percent capacity. “It’s kind of a good news, bad news situation,” he said. “The lake has risen 28.5 feet in the past month. However it’s still at 51 percent of average for this time of year.”

More at SFGate.com >>>

Boating, Fish, Rafting, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Folsom Lake rises 12+ feet in 2 days

The wet weather this week in northern California left many Christmas travelers worried, and water experts smiling. Folsom Lake has gone up nearly 13 feet in just two days.

According to measurements from the California Bureau of Reclamation, the lake, which serves as a water source for many Sacramento-area neighborhoods, rose 12.6 feet.

There is similar good news from the Department of Water Resources, whose graph shows a sharp spike from this week’s storm. According to their measurements, Folsom Lake’s storage went from 16 percent of capacity on Monday to 19 percent capacity Wednesday.

More at ABC10.com >>>

Events, Fish, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Salmon Move Into Nimbus Hatchery

Nimbus Fish Hatchery workers have counted a total of 2,765 fall-run Chinook salmon, including 789 jacks and jills (two-year-old fish), at the facility since the salmon ladder opened Monday, Nov. 2

Considering the low flows of 500 cfs, this return is surprisingly good. Last year at this time the hatchery staff had counted approximately 2950 salmon, including 350 adults.

The other good news is that the water temperature on the river has cooled down 5 to 7 degrees over one week.

“The water temperature has gone down to 55 to 57 degrees, depending on which gauge you go by,” said Gary Novak, hatchery manager. “That’s phenomenal; last year the water temperature didn’t cool down to this temperature until the middle of November.”

The hatchery has spawned salmon three times to date. Novak noted that many of the fish at the facility are still “green,” not ready for spawning yet.

The 300,000 juvenile steelhead that will be released into the river system next February have also returned to the hatchery, after spending the summer at the Feather River Fish Hatchery in Oroville, due to high water temperatures at Nimbus.

A record low number of Central Valley steelhead, listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act, returned to the American River in January, February and March of 2015 and December of 2014. Only 143 adult steelhead returned to Nimbus Fish Hatchery during this time. In good years, the hatchery has trapped between 2000 and 4000 adult steelhead.

More at IndyBay.org >>>

Boating, Fish, History, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Folsom Lake Water Level Shrinks To New Historic Low

The water level of Folsom Lake has dipped to a new historic low.

On Sunday the lake level was measured at 140,410 acre feet. The previous record was set in November 1977 when the lake decreased to 140,600 acre feet.

Recent rain has provided a little help, but there’s still a long way to go.

“We may have a very wet winter, but if we don’t have dramatic snowfall and so forth we’ve got to still be conscious we’re still living through this drought,” he Rep. Ami Bera during a recent tour of the lake.

As has been long discussed, Bera says the state must find better ways to store water and he’s pushing the proposed Sites Reservoir, a potential water storage option west of Colusa. The planned reservoir would hold twice the water of Folsom Lake.

More at CBSLocal.com >>>

Events, Fish, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Fish Ladder Opens On American River

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is releasing water from the bottom of Folsom Lake in an effort to get the river temperature below 60 degrees.

Laura Drath with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife says that’s the temperature needed for fall-run chinook to spawn.

“We have water running down the ladder from the hatchery to the river,” she says. “And when the salmon feel that current their instinct is to swim up river. So, they’ll jump up the steps of the ladder, make their way up the ladder from the river to the hatchery where we can  take bring them inside and start spawning them and collecting those eggs.”

The Nimbus Hatchery on the American River will open its fish ladder Monday morning for spawning salmon.

Drath says it’s too early to say how many salmon will return to spawn.

More at CapRadio.org >>>

Boating, Fish, History, Rafting, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Folsom Lake hits lowest depths in 20-plus years

Even as Sacramento waits for the soaking El Niño forecast to hit this fall, Folsom Lake continues to lose water and will almost certainly fall Thursday to its lowest level in more than 20 years, government data show.

Folsom Lake provides drinking water to hundreds of thousands of residents in the Sacramento region. Releases from the federal reservoir also serve as a bulwark against Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta saltwater intrusion, and are critical to maintaining the delicate ecosystem of the lower American River.

Folsom Lake became the face of California’s drought early last year when aerial photos of its moonscape lake bed were broadcast nationwide. At its lowest point last year, the lake level was the same as what the reservoir contained Wednesday. By Thursday, the reservoir is expected to fall to levels last seen in 1992, at the tail end of a five-year drought. And by month’s end, the depth likely will approach levels not seen since the great drought of 1977.

Area water officials said they are concerned about the dwindling supply but expressed relief that lake depths are not even lower. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the reservoir, initially warned that the lake could fall to 120,000 acre-feet by the end of September.

“The situation has been so rough,” said bureau spokesman Shane Hunt. “We are doing everything we can to make sure we maintain water supplies to homes.”

Still, he added, “We are better than a worst-case scenario.”

More at SacBee.com>>>
Fish, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Drought could make salmon fishing conditions even worse

They also said they don’t think there were more than just a few fish in the water.

October is typically the most active time of year for salmon fishing, but that activity has slowed to a trickle because of the ongoing drought — and it could be about to get worse.

The Bureau of Reclamation last week reduced water flows into the river in an effort to store what little water remains at Folsom Lake. Less water typically means warmer water, and anglers say it has gotten too warm for the fish.

“We’ve been up and down the river, all the spots that we fish, they’re so low, you can’t even fish them,” said Rodney Durrett, who had his fishing line in the water at Sailor Bar Park. “We’re talking like, 6 inches of water, where we should have 2 feet of water. I mean, it’s kind of sad.”

The flow was reduced from 800 cubic feet per second to 700 in late September, then ultimately to 600 on Oct. 1, said Shane Hunt, a spokesman for the bureau, and, it might be reduced even further, Hunt said.

He said the agency is keeping a close eye on water temperature changes.

More at KCRA.com >>>