I watch this every year closely as it effects my summer fishery to some degree.

I don't think it had as much to do with windows of power generation as it did USACOE blowing the spring runoff/rain predictions. Back in Feb/March when we had the different snow storms things looked ok. 2 things didn't happen thereafter:

1) The snow pack wasn't as much as first thought.

2) We didn't get our usual heavy spring rains. April and May were pretty damn dry from a significant rain standpoint. By my observations, most years, they top off the lake with the spring rain drenchings......well before snow runoff starts. Didn't happen this year because we didn't get the rain. The only remedy would have been to curtail flows even earlier to rise the lake with the last of the rain runoff. Of course, no one knew of the dry conditions to come so this wasn't done. This also happened in the "Blob" year of 2015 or 2016.(don't remember which)

I does seem the lake is even lower this time around which ain't good. If the lake goes dry by August/Sept there will be no steady outflow to maintain river levels and you think the river's low now? Long range forecast for June is drier than usual so I don't see a remedy anytime soon.

Looking ahead, I'd get in the habit of topping off the lake near the end of March on the heals of the last big storms. From there, keep outflow up as needed until things stabilize in June.