Weirs Closed

[Smalls]

Originally Posted by MathGeek

Making the lake itself less salty is a multi-million dollar project. The best you can do with the realistic financial potential of a regional conservation group is improve the science on when the weirs are opened and closed and perhaps exert a bit of policy pressure investigating options to lower salinity in the lake.

By installing salinity sensors on the lake side and the marsh side, you can open the gates any time conditions show that open gates would lead to a net flow of salt out of the marsh and close them when actual local conditions show open gates would add salt to the marsh.

Until this is handled, efforts at replanting vegetation are risky because improper weir management will let too much salt into the marsh and kill the veggies.

Not entirely correct. Lets not forget, I did revegetation projects behind the weirs. I planted grass all over Cal/Cam and south central Louisiana for that matter. Its all about the planning. In 3 years, we had 2 projects fail out of 30, and those were because of high water that was over the plants.

[Cripley]

Hey CCA started somewhere and they got plenty money but I do not believe it's about directly funding but pressuring lobbying for funding

[MathGeek]

Originally Posted by Smalls

Not entirely correct. Lets not forget, I did revegetation projects behind the weirs. I planted grass all over Cal/Cam and south central Louisiana for that matter. Its all about the planning. In 3 years, we had 2 projects fail out of 30, and those were because of high water that was over the plants.

I stand corrected. Thanks for the clarification. How many of those 30 are still alive today?

[Duck Butter]

You may have a tough time convincing people that salinity needs to be lowered in the lake, especially folks that depend on saltwater species of fish to make their living. Its happening on the east side right now with the proposed freshwater diversions

[Smalls]

Originally Posted by MathGeek

I stand corrected. Thanks for the clarification. How many of those 30 are still alive today?

Well, haven't seen the ones from last year, but all the others are doing great.

[noodle creek]

Originally Posted by Natural Light Kid

I'm afraid some aren't seeing the big picture. If u dynamite the weirs the fishing will be great like right after Rita. Problem is it won't last. The marsh will die and all the things that make it great when the weirs are open will no longer be there. When the weirs are open, and bait enters the lake, it's great for the fishing. If the marsh is dead, and their is no bait entering the lake when the weirs are open, then you will not have good fishing or hunting. I think we (me included) need to try to look at the big picture and come up with a solution to solve the problemS, not the problem like we've been doing. Things are cyclical. You cannot have great fishing 24/7/365. Im sure back in the day before the ship channels, there were good times and bad times, but man wasnt there to freak out if they didnt load the boat up one day with fish. The estuary is dependent on lots of things including certain levels of salinity, freshwater flushings, thriving surrounding marshes, etc. I wish there was a way that we could return things back to as original as possible.

I get the whole picture, a lot needs to be done. We need oyster reefs back and to rock off the ship channel, i get that. I'm just saying that fishing sucks when the weirs are closed. Bottom line.

[noodle creek]

My question is, if we rocked the ship channel leaving a little cut where super cut used to be and a little cut at the washout, would the weirs still be just as necessary?

[Cripley]

Originally Posted by noodle creek

My question is, if we rocked the ship channel leaving a little cut where super cut used to be and a little cut at the washout, would the weirs still be just as necessary?

Good question

[MathGeek]

Originally Posted by noodle creek

My question is, if we rocked the ship channel leaving a little cut where super cut used to be and a little cut at the washout, would the weirs still be just as necessary?

Good question. The answer is a definitive yes. To keep Big Lake as a brackish estuary with suitable salinities for good growth of oysters and reproduction of trout, etc. it needs to be saltier at times than you would want to have directly connected to the marsh between 5 and 15 ppt, depending on the time of year and water temps, etc.

It may also happen that the separation between the channel and lake is not always sufficient to keep salinities in the lake sufficiently low. An event like an extended period with low rain will eventually cause the salinity in the lake to approach 20-30 ppt. If there is no fresh water flowing into the system, the salinity will creep higher and higher. Reducing the coupling of the system to the Gulf just slows the process down and lowers the average salinity over time, it does not mean a high salinity event can never occur in the lake.

But keeping the salinity in the lake at 5-15 ppt most of the time would mean that the weirs could be open many more days per year than they are now - maybe an average of 240+ days per year: possibly 300 days in a good year and only 150 days in a bad year.

["W"]

Weirs should never ever be closed. Never

You already restrict the water going in to a minimum

[slickfish]

Originally Posted by "W"

CCA get off there azz and do some marsh restoration instead of sunshine pumping a useless half million dollar reef maybe we can save the marsh and allow weirs to stay open

You've only said that a million times. You sound like a broken record. How's running your bubble gums working for ya? It's amazing that gbay has as much marsh as it does an doesn't have an issue. We have enough birds every year to justify the effort even with the mass development going on over here in the lone star state.

[capt coonassty]

No one will ever be happy, there is no solution to a problem so complex. Deteriorating marshes lead to productive fisheries. But for how long and at what cost. The weirs are the only thing protecting the east side from completely breaking down. To keep the them open full time will produce some amazing fishing but will only be short lived. Fisheries go through different trends, some one year, others over 5 and 10 year peaks and lows. Other fisheries has been recorded to do so. I don't think that the trout fishery has enough data over enough time to show this but it could be on a downward side of a trend only to be compounded with other influences to produce lows.

For the ones who want the weirs open all of the time, do you recognize that this will have negative effects on the marsh that produces your great fishery? And are you fine with the fact that this short term success and irreversible?

[bjqx]

Where's all the silt go from dredging? They make spoil areas around Sabine and use those areas to do some mash restoration after it settles. Their up and down the ship channel on Pleasure Island and North between Port Arthur and Bridge city. They even make some good duck hunting for a young guy with good legs.

Sent from my C771 using Tapatalk 2

[Goooh]

Originally Posted by slickfish

You've only said that a million times. You sound like a broken record. How's running your bubble gums working for ya? It's amazing that gbay has as much marsh as it does an doesn't have an issue. We have enough birds every year to justify the effort even with the mass development going on over here in the lone star state.

It does have an issue, do some research.

[Smalls]

Originally Posted by slickfish

You've only said that a million times. You sound like a broken record. How's running your bubble gums working for ya? It's amazing that gbay has as much marsh as it does an doesn't have an issue. We have enough birds every year to justify the effort even with the mass development going on over here in the lone star state.

Maybe you should do some research on your own waters. Funny, there isn't a single water in the state of Louisiana that has a "Marsh Mania" annually to plant marsh grass because it is eroding away. I Googled "Galveston Bay Marsh", and get a good bit of press and research on the loss of salt marsh. Sounds like GBay has some issues too.

Oh, and lets not forget that Oil Spill that just occurred there. Funny, USFWS seemed to think that was a pretty big issue.

[jchief]

Originally Posted by bjqx

Where's all the silt go from dredging? They make spoil areas around Sabine and use those areas to do some mash restoration after it settles. Their up and down the ship channel on Pleasure Island and North between Port Arthur and Bridge city. They even make some good duck hunting for a young guy with good legs.

Sent from my C771 using Tapatalk 2

They are doing the same here. That is one reason for the rock on the channel. They are filling in with the dredge.

[Goooh]

Originally Posted by Smalls

Maybe you should do some research on your own waters. Funny, there isn't a single water in the state of Louisiana that has a "Marsh Mania" annually to plant marsh grass because it is eroding away. I Googled "Galveston Bay Marsh", and get a good bit of press and research on the loss of salt marsh. Sounds like GBay has some issues too.

Oh, and lets not forget that Oil Spill that just occurred there. Funny, USFWS seemed to think that was a pretty big issue.

Maybe he meant Guantanamo Bay

[Natural Light Kid]

Originally Posted by "W"

Weirs should never ever be closed. Never

You already restrict the water going in to a minimum

Sure. And your guide business will be done soon.

[MathGeek]

It's kinda funny. When others can't catch fish and complain, it must be because conditions changed and they just aren't good enough fisherman to get on them.

But when some more confident peeps can't catch fish, it must be because the sky is falling and all the fish have packed up and gone somewhere else.

Big Lake is a hard place to fish. Even experience doesn't always provide the right recipe for all the curve balls this lake throws.

Drawing conclusions about the health of the estuary from a string of unproductive fishing trips is unwarranted, regardless of the skill of the angler. There are just too many other places the fish could be, and too many valid reasons the fish could be right under you but not buying what you are selling.

This is why the most scientifically valid stock assessments use fishery independent sampling methods. Nets are placed at random locations throughout the estuary, and many, many net locations are used over a long period of time to arrive at a reasonable first order approximation of fish populations. Even this level of scientific effort and careful sampling protocol often yields error bars on the order of 50% for population numbers.

Reactionary fishery management because we're catching fewer fish than last year really isn't any better science than the non-sense pushed by CCA.

Opening the weirs does enhance the food supply for the fish in the lake, and the more days the weirs are open, the happier and healthier and fatter the fish will be. In the short term, the more days a year the weirs are open, the more fish there will be. But in the long term, you're trading a real increase on the order of 20% over a few years but sacrificing the long term (10+ years later) potential of the fishery by 50% or more.

Opening the weirs really does more in terms of making the fish predictable and easy to catch than it does in actually increasing the number and health of the fish.

["W"]

Originally Posted by Natural Light Kid

Sure. And your guide business will be done soon.

How do you know this??? Weirs were open for years and years and marsh stayed healthy??

Only took a beaten after two hurricanes but it's back to normal