The Underground’s Short Casts for 2009-11-16

by Tom Chandler on November 16, 2009 · 2 comments

  • Ok, I lied in my earlier post; went fly fishing again today (the real season closer). And got skunked on a tiny stream. Report coming soon. #

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1 Liz Bowen November 16, 2009 at 1:31 pm

Gotta tell ya Tom that your info on illegal irrigation on the Scott River is incorrect. If any water is or was used from the Scott River last month and this month, it is for livestock and as such is LEGAL. DFG does not look the other way and it is really DWR, the Department of Water Resources that oversees irrigation and stock water diversions and does the water mastering NOT the DFG.
I own nearly a mile of Scott River and there is plenty of water running now and in most of October. Once irrigation season was over in Aug and Sept and frosts came and the trees stopped taking so much water, and it rained — the river increased in size. It is pretty amazing to watch the change in the water level from just the reduction of trees using so much water.
I would invite you over to fish, but because of the listing of the coho salmon with the California Endangered Species Act, it is illegal to fish for anything in my section of the Scott River.  (Quote)

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2 Tom Chandler November 16, 2009 at 2:23 pm

Liz Bowen: Gotta tell ya Tom that your info on illegal irrigation on the Scott River is incorrect. If any water is or was used from the Scott River last month and this month, it is for livestock and as such is LEGAL

Actually, the blog post in question counters that; Pace suggests that irrigators are using the livestock rule to covertly irrigate:

At the same time another major irrigation ditch – the Farmer’s Ditch below Callahan – was running at an estimated 3 to 5 cubic feet per second (cfs). Since the irrigation season had ended more than two weeks earlier, the Farmer’s Ditch was officially running to supply livestock water – a right of 0.1 cfs. However, this irrigation district has been known to practice out-of-season irrigation. Here’s a photo showing out-of-season irrigation of a cattle pasture from the Farmer’s Ditch in a recent prior year. The photo was taken in early November.

Invoking Fish & Game isn’t about water mastering, but their willingness to look the other way as protected fish stocks are decimated, and in fact, their willingness to issue a blanket incidental take permit definitely does qualify as “looking the other way.”  (Quote)

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