3 things:

1) Didymo (aka rock snot) has taken hold in the Cumberland River below the dam. It's a non-native invasive species. It's believed that it may have been brought up here by people fishing the Clinch where it has completely taken over. It only takes a few pieces to get it going. If you take your boat or wade the Cumberland, you are advised to clean your gear with a bleach solution that will kill it especially if you fish other local waters. The research shows that rock snot is detrimental to aquatic insect habitat and therefore detrimental to the fishery. This stuff is here to stay.

2) There is some algae (not rock snot) that has bloomed with the low water conditions down there as well. A lot of this will get blown down river with the heavy water release that's currently going on.

3) I agree that this heavy flow will probably hurt any natural spawning that occurred this fall with the low water. We witnessed spawning browns down there a couple months ago at rainbow run. While I haven't seen any evidence that there a sucessful spawn last year when the conditions were better, we did catch a few small rainbows in June that were around 4 inches which are smaller than the typical stockers. Might just be a coincidence.