Cumberland/Wolf River Dam - repairs

[KR]

It will make for one heck of a striper season when them suckers follow the bait up in the spring! No trees to throw into when the lake is at winter pool!

[striperjoe]

I have an article from the Russell County Recorder on the Dam repairs.
They are going to start working on Wolf Creek Dam in 2007.
The repairs will take 5 years and they will leave the lake level
at a "Recreational Pool".
I remember the late 70's when they were working on the Wolf Creek Dam, there was a lot of high and dry land around the lake.
Alot of people did pull out during that time.
Hopefully the lake level won't go that low this time, we''l just have to wait and see.
Gary K

[buzzking]

Dave, I havent read this anywhere but this is my opinion, this type of stuff is what I am majoring in. The whole c-land river and all the surrounding areas is depending on c-land to hold a certain amount of stage storage in the spring, if it doenst then every lake on the chain will be affected somewhat, I would say the change by the time it gets to barkley will be non-existent, unless we have a wetter than normal spring, but with the weather pattern of the last 5 years we are in line for another dry one in 07

[buzzking]

yea, shadrap, with the flow capabilities of the cumberland river itself, any changes in the chain will be minor and very temporary.

[Boatnut]

Here's a link to a .pdf file by the corps explaining it..300 million and 7 years to complete.....typical government job.

Mike(aka Boatnut)

[Dave Stewart]

I figured as much...not really expecting a big change down here unless we have some big floods this spring up river but I do expect we will see a little more current than normal....that just may signal an early Crappie bite in bays on Barkley if current is above normal and prolonged. Guess we will find out come spring and for the next 5 or 6 of them...lol.

[jigman73]

The article that I read in the somerset paper said kinda the same thing that most are saying. Repairs are to start in 07 and if everything goes as planned then the work will be completed in 14, but that depends on everything going as planned and no delays, but lets be real, this is the government we are talking about. Water levels were to be below or next to winter pool and never to exceed summer pool. There is suppose to be an agreement with the KDFW that says that they will start letting the water come up when it gets around the spawn (water temp somewhere around mid 50's if I remember right). All this is due to the fact that they didn't fix the problem before in the 70's just patched it, so now they are having to go back and try to fix it. Again I say remember that we are talking about the government.
God Bless and have fun.
Lee

[onemorecast56]

Hi Guys, when i first started to fish cumberland in the early 80`s the lake was 70 ft low when i started. After years of the water low the willow trees and grass got a hold on the banks,,,,that year it went from 70ft low to 30feet into the trees in 1 month,,,,people what a fish popalation (can`t spell) jump did we ever have,,,,the fishing was GREAT for the next 6 -7 years!,,,I hope they hold it down for a few years just to see if it happens again,,,,,

[Chubminnow]

Since we're on the subject of Cumberland/Wolf Creek **** I figured I ask the question here instead of starting a new thread...

Does anyone know if they're letting out a bunch of water last weekend/this week/this weekend? Have they already pulled the lake down to winter pool or are they still pulling?

[riverman]

They're not pulling it down at all right now. I was on the river twice last week. You can see the five day forecast here: http://www.orn.usace.army.mil/hh/products/memrvrbna.txt

These are really low numbers and if you look at the graph of the lake level here: http://www.orn.usace.army.mil/hh/resplots/wol_a.html You'll see that it's at the lowest level that they want. To explain, there's two curves they try to follow. A top and a bottom SEPA curve. I really don't know what SEPA stands for but I DO know that they try to keep the lake level between the two.

Hope this helps!

[Chubminnow]

WLCK2 3.2/ 3.2/ 3.2/ 2.6/ 2.6:WOLF CREEK DAM

The numbers I've listed above came directly from the link you gave me...I have no idea what they represent...can you give me some insight?

[etcfishin]

I'll take a stab at this and someone correct me if I'm wrong. The set of numbers shows the average outflow of water from the dam per day. The first number is usually the current day if you look at the post after around 2:00PM. The 2nd number is tomorrow and so on and so forth. I believe that 3.2 is 3200 CFS. When Cumberland is running at full tilt it can spit out around 20,000 CFS or more, so you can see that the water release is at a much lower average. Now you can't really tell what the release schedule is from this data, it is just an average. They could relase 3,200 CFS all day or release 20,000 for just a few hours and shut it off, but you can make an assumption that the river level will be fairly low at these levels and shoals will be exposed at various points during the day. I will also say that these numbers will change each day and you can't really forecast the release levels for say 5 days out. You won't, however, see very drastic changes in these numbers unless we have heavy rain so you can make plans that if you see 3.2 four days out there's a pretty good chance that they won't be releasing a lot of water on that day. I do a lot of wading on Cumberland and generally when I see these numbers get around 7.0 and higher, there's not a whole lot of time for wading based on the water release schedule.

You should always check the TVA website the night before to get the actual water release for the next day. It usually updates for the next day in the early afternoon. I've never really seen them make changes to this schedule within 24 hours, but you should always be aware of changing water conditions. Would be interested to get a more scientific explanation on the numbers, these are just my observations.