Rural System's

Silver Waters: The Stream Fishery

Silverwaters is a sub-system of The Fishery of Rural System. Concepts for the enterprise have been developed for years. Its competitor is the State agency and a few consultants who may become cooperators. It deals with the total fishery, only one part of which is its geographically-focused, scientifically-based work to protect, restore, and enhance the freshwater stream aquatic habitats and the watersheds upon which they depend.

See 2007 Internet unit on streams.

I hope you will ask about or explore the economics of stream restoration that Rural System may some day do for a farm owner so that we would partition the costs and benefits to an owner from upstream improvements (real change from investment in the stream in (over a 30-year investment period) in :

1. peak flow structural damage (foregoing probable average flood $ loss from a 50-year flood)
2. sediment not eroded from riparian volume (acre feet of top soil at current sale price) ,
3. sediment in water (reduced meat value from cattle watered with less than clear water) (recent local research)
4. water quality improvement (at average rate of municipal "water purification" per gallon)
5. stream fish watching (probable recreation hours at federal recreation rate/hour)
6. reduced litigation costs (authenticated biodiversity stability or improvement)
7. firewood increase in the managed riparian space ($/cord)
8. bird watching in riparian space (Avi golf - see Rural System chapter; (probable person-hours @ $5 per hour.)
9. fire protection (insurance equivalent)
10. miscellaneous intermittent uses
11. probable ground water ( est minimum value of pure municipal-equivalent water ($ per gallon of pure water) from a well at the farm entrance of the stream)
12. ignore angling because streams are small and predicting angling intensity on variable streams is too costly.

The following diverse notes are from an interview with Dr. Louis Helfrisch, 3-5-1996, a fisheries extension specialist for 15 years in Virginia and once acting-head of the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences at Virginia Tech.

• There are few superior, computer-using freshwater stream fishery consultants. He saw little money in it in the way it is practiced then (1996) although he thought it might be changed within a diverse activity.
• Consultants do serve, but these deal extensively with herbicide work on pools and pond vegetation. These are "weed scientists" botanists, biologists and not fishery managers. Some serve as hatchery consultants. Some work for lake associations solving problems of "weeds" and water quality.
• Connections possible with the state agency are informal, advisory, research funding, and friendly but not substantial. Delays are common.
• Publications are one potential. Bait production (addresses available also see Alpha Earth)
• Links with the veterinary school may be possible. Dr. Steve Smith will do disease diagnoses for $35 (1996). Reports of pathology are common but when clients learn of the cost, they rarely proceed.
• He had no mailing list but one can be created from Conservation Digest, Trout Unlimited, Bass Masters, etc. and the Virginia Aquaculture Blue Book
• The range in ponds is 1/4 acre to 50 acres. There are 70,000 ponds in Virginia There are no databases on these. Old paper records may exist in SCS files. Perhaps 9000 are used for irrigation.
• There is no report but in 1990 he did a survey and found the value of a pond (1-acre) is $10,000 (about the price of creating one). There are many other values difficult to quantify.
• Scanlon and Helfrisch once did a paper on fish pests at hatcheries, etc. There were no major bird pests reported at ponds.
• A warmwater pond can produce 600-800 pounds of fish per acre.
• Dr. George Flick may give advice on cleaning fish (His view is that cleaning caught fish is one reason why more pond fish are not used (often thrown back.)
• Bait sales may work. There are many mom/pop bait shops. Many sell worms. Bait dealers may be coordinated. Perry Minnow Farm, Sussex County, is a supply.
• Trout ponds, when cold water is available, work well. These are put and take style. There is no reproduction and produce 150 pounds of trout per year (double than in limestone areas or in warmer areas).
• Do not dump manure into ponds - it is better to feed the fish directly rather than to send nutrients through the food chain.
• Rotenone is good but a risk. It may kill important stream fish below the lake. Pump and drawdown is the best strategy.
• Pet native fish are possible. Aquarium is big business. Contact Conservation Wetwork, 540 Roosevelt Ave., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2A 1Z8
• It is possible to stabilize production in a pond by feeding the fish routinely.
• He discourages caged fish. It works but production is limited. An alternative may be private net pen culture.
• Muskrats are rarely a problem. They offer a potential service target.
• A fountain may be an option for development later. Boats are rare on ponds. They can be recommended for safety as well as other uses.
• There is little fishing. Enthusiasm for a pond disappears after 2-3 years. There is almost no fly fishing. Casting tournaments are possible.
• In the pond, artificial reefs are encouraged to focus the catch, not on produce more fish.
• If pollution cleanup is needed there are 20+ environmental consulting firms (see the telephone yellow pages) People who create ponds often have a drag to clean out a pond. Ponds can be easily dried, often by diverting water around them.
• A sediment pond above the pond is the best way to handle a persistent silt problem.
• Beware of human flukes in water cress.
• Work on improved fence crossings and gates. Grass waterways are sufficient if well developed. Drawdown pipes can be used with water developments below the pond.

The topics for development:

1. Stream Monitoring (Stolnack et al. 2005)
2. Impact analyses
3. Regulations - fishing, license, laws related to private owners, fee fishing (license/fee permits), enforcement on private ponds, posting, and trespass
4. Private land streams and publically-stocked fish regulations
5. Liability of owner and users of pond, boats, caught fish
6. The cost of a pond - production foregone in having one; the tax on an equivalent size area; the land value with and without a pond
7. County-specific fish lists from state data base with description and ecology (available from Internet or from a CD)
8. County specific stream profiles - full scale ecological and other descriptions with GIS and cross-section descriptions -- The Tributary reports.
9. Description of services/ opportunities
10. Sales of photographs, GIS images of streams and watersheds
11. Running public lectures on streams and their fishery.

We know that stream watersheds are very variable. Each is probably unique. To study a group of such basins is to encounter extreme variance in most statistics. Fish assemblages are variable and vary over time. They are dependent upon highly variable food supplies, many being substitutable. The food assemblages are highly variable among seasons and years. To detect differences in fish or fish food in a stream watershed resulting from a timber harvest is unlikely, largely because of the variabilities listed. Logging effects are largely a function of surface topography (as well as the loggers activities). To generalize about such effects will be difficult for it will require many streams and many years of data to account for the variations known to occur. Williams et al. (2002 ) for just such reasons could not detect logging effects on fish assemblages.

We contemplate studies such as:

The Dynamics of a Managed Lotic Environment in a Virginia Appalachian Mountain Objectives: 1. To describe the preliminary changes in structure, organic matter, and biota, particularly crayfish, in a mountain stream undergoing an extreme gradient reduction treatment. 2. To develop a predictive model for such change and test it on several nearby streams.

A Generalized Stream Hydrograph for Southwestern Virginia and an Appalachian Geographic Window Objectives: 1. To develop an equation or equations to express monthly stream flow (cfs) in unmonitored watersheds of a mountainous Appalachian geographic window 2.To estimate base flow. yield= f (area, many factors, precipitation) yield= f (baseflow in a month)

As we study streams, we find some that need restoration. Typically this is of faunal space for game fish but it may and should deal with the spectrum of potential stream benefits and services, the suggestions of "success." More generally, we seek fairly natural conditions and a rich stream fish community, one that we view as a desirable condition. We expect high variance in fish richness and abundance within stream reaches. We therefore continue to study and seek to express precisely the objectives related to stream recovery and subsequent stability. (These may be biological, but probably include riparian volumes conditions, topographic, shade, and economic statements.) While scientific foundations are needed for decisions, there are other dimensions of accumulated experience as well as anticipated financial gains that need to be articulated in plans and project descriptions. These views of the future need to be described and included within the project plans for they are needed for later analyses of project successes.

Next, we must describe the strategies for implementing restoration and subsequent stabilization or management.

The consequences and likely gains and benefits from restoration need to be made clear.

Evaluation, monitoring, and feedback systems are needed as well.

Reaches Pool riffles Step pools Step-steps (Cascade down to Step-Pool) Cascades Rapids Bedrock

Stream Temperature

We need regular work for several years to develop equations for stream temperature and air temperature and for upstream temperature effects on reach water temperature. These may lead to standard guides for taking stream temperatures that produce useful numbers for useful models of stream and organism responses. We know that canopy cover removals increase maximum stream temperature while adjacent harvested and unharvested streams will retain the same stream temperatures.

We know that hardwood canopy of riparian areas contributes more and more diverse materials to streams than conifers.

Channel Steps and the Cross-section

Channel steps formed by large woody debris and by boulders are important elements of streams. Number, interval, and heights are not likely to differ among managed or unmanaged areas. A negative exponential relationship is likely to exist between channel gradient and mean length of step intervals in the headwaters, not in colluvial-process reaches.

Organic Debris

Logging debris can form steps and can later modify channels to form reaches that are step pools to step-steps. Removals of large trees has changes the gradient, the scour, and runout and deposition of sediment. Loss of the beaver had similar influences of pool formations and water velocities after large storms in forests.

Silver Waters is a subsystem of The Fishery. There are other major linkages in The Trevey and in the main web site.

See The Fishery chapter in Rural System...Just Dreaming (Draft)

Hyporheic exchange

The below-the-stream bottom, the underground water and biological system is the hyporheic community. As other system it has its own structure, dynamic, and relations. There has been little study except as it relates to location and survival of some fish species eggs. It is a biologically diverse world with many undescribed species. Ecological functions therein are largely unknown.

Pool step reach sequences are the major stream features driving hyporheic exchange flows.

Outstanding Resource Waters

In some areas, the US Forest Service has designated waters as "outstanding resource waters." That designation ensures that on those waters, existing water quality will be maintained and protected. That could require an additional layer of review, or even curtail, activities that could affect the waters, from snowmobiling to logging to road building. It may be a useful designation for private lands and may suggest alternative management for these waters and related areas.

See McDonald & Woodward Publishing Company A Handbook for Stream Enhancement and Stewardship 2005

See

• Trout Unlimited
• Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation

Reference

Everest, F.H., C.E. McLemore, and J. F. Ward. 1980. An improved tri-tube cryogenic gravel sampler, USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest For. and Range Exp. Sta., PNW-350, Portland, OR

Stolnack, S.A., M.D. Bryant, and R.C. Wissmar. 2005. A review of protocols for monitoring streams and juvenile fish in forested regions of the Pacific Northwest., USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Ge, Tech, Report PNW-GRT-625, 36p.

Williams, L.R., C.M. Taylor, M.L. Warren Jr., and J.A. Clingenpeel. 2002. Large-scale effects of timber harvesting on streams in the Ouachita Mountains, Arkansas, USA. Environmental Management 29(1): 76-87.

Return to the top.

Home
October 26, 2006