Our final fall Stream Team event took place on Sat October 30th. We had 6 FATC brothers attend, to make the trek to Calvey Creek at Robertsville State Park.
The trip had a few surprises and not what we had expected.
Things started off…a bit off. For those that have been there before, you know there is a little bit of a hike involved. No trails, just bushwacking all the way down and back. We gathered around 8:45 and started our hike at 9. Mike Chambers informs us that he has a “better” route to get down to the water than we have been taking in the past. Without much questioning, we follow his lead. How hard can it be? If you are on the top of a hill and want to find a river, head downhill. Right? Well, we walk, and we walk, and we walk. After a bit more walking than expected, some of us pull out our GPS and figure out how far off track we are. Turns out, we were well upstream of where we wanted to be. Although Mr. Chambers may not ever hear the end of it, it was nothing that we can’t recover from.
We finally make it down to the stream, and it looks…well…horrible. Levels were VERY low, lots of silt and sand, extremely low flow, almost stagnant. Our previous monitoring locations were unusable because of the flow, so we walked the stream and found three acceptable spots to collect our bugs. Not expecting much, we start or collection.
To our surprise, in our first net, we found 13 different insects, including, 6 of the top 7 most sensitive to water quality. We found to normal, Mayfly, Caddisfly and Water Penny like we always do, but we also found Hellgrammites, Stonefly and a new 2 that we have NEVER found in any of our streams, the Watersnipe Fly Larvae and a Dragonfly Nymph . When we were all done, the stream came out to a water quality rating of 32. Anything 23 and above is considered Excellent. In Stream Team terms, 32 is WAY above 23, so we were REALLY surprised. If you don’t know what all these insets look like, join us on a Stream Team event and find out.
In addition to the biological monitoring, we completed our chemical analysis, discharge measurement, and trash pickup. There was very little trash found, but we did dig out one more old tire to add to our growing mound of tires we’re building up in the woods out of reach of the stream. Finally, for the deer hunters, on the way in and out we crossed and followed several deer trails, saw several rubs, and also ran across one very well-defined classic buck scrape.
If you have not attended a Stream Team event, plan to get in on one of the upcoming events. These are a great way to learn about our streams and will help you in your fly fishing.
