Is it just me or are there stories and related images to this effect every fall? Usually it's either in the OlyPenn or down in the Tillamook area.

It does make for an interesting photo-op, but I have to wonder if effective road crossing techniques are starting to be passed down through the salmon DNA by now.

Here's the problem with undersized or inadequate culverts. In high water, the fish (chums in this case) either can't get thru because of the high flows or the culvert is blocked. It's likely blocked from debris. The fish, being Pacific salmon, aren't deterred by this but run the risk of ending up as road kill. Not a pretty sight.

Why did the Salmon cross the road?

To get to my chartreuse yarn on his way to my smoker, of course!!!

AuntyM,

Not to dispute you, But I believe the past horrendous logging practices upriver, combined with the dikes that channel the lower river probably contribute more to the Skok flooding every year than Cushman dam does. (I hate dams too )

Hootchie,

Probably more likely they cross the road to AVOID chartreuse yarn. If you know what I mean

4salt, would like to hear how the dikes caused more flooding?

Fishhead5

Dikes contribute to, rather than cause flooding. Flooding is fundamentally caused by more water coming down than can flow through the river system. I know, "duh...". But you have to get that to get why dikes don't work.

Dikes are problematic because they seek to contain a volume of water that is larger than they can logically hold. When a river is channelized, straightened, and diked, it loses capacity. Think about it for a bit. Between point a and b, if the river bends back and forth like a snake, for a given depth of water, it will hold more water. So, if you straighten it, it loses it's ability to buffer a flood.

Next, the flood plain itself is a reservoir. The more flood plain room you have, the more room the river has to spread out, and the less it has to rise when the flooding happens. If it has a little room to spread, any given flood is minimised.

When our friendly corps of engineers dikes a river, they typically try to straighten it as well, so they can build less dike. The problem is, they can't add slant to it, so when the flood waters come, the river speed doesn't pick up enough to handle the inflow. The water backs up, and ultimately goes over the weak point in the dike, with the attendent disaster. Remember all the footage from the mississippi a few years back?

So what is happening is that a flood height that would have been x feet high if allowed to spread over the flood plain gets squished up into some x+y higher height, because it's squeezed into the dike. Kind of like squeezing a balloon - it has to come out somewhere.

The Corps is having a hard time with the simple math exercise that diking requires, because a dike that is big enough for a 500 year flood is just too big to be economically feasible. A simpler solution would be to remind people why the land next to the river bank is flat, and tell them that if they build a house there, it's their problem when the river comes up.

What he said!

at work when we have a flood we just send the dikes out to the river.

Apparently boater can blame a girl, AuntyM.

I passed the Skok today on my way to Union. Stopped to help a litlle old Russian lady yard in a green chum hen. She had a net, but hadn't yet figured out how to fish and net at the same time.

The river was still a bit high, but there were a few fishers and I counted four different gillnetters from the mouth on up.

The Skok hasn't been diked from side to side, it hasn't been straighted out. It isn't at all like the mississippi, but yet it's always compaired to it. We have record runs of fish back this year, why?

Fishhead5

Wish they wouldn't plaster pictures of those dogs crossin 101 all over the print and teli media! This is a bigtime zipperlip doggie fishery ! Pretty soon the "rivers runs thru it" crowd from Hoodsport will be lining both sides of the Highway every time they predict the Skok is gonna flood :p ! Then we'll get the drift boaters and sledders hogging both lanes
with no room for us bankies.

"Best of the Best"
Team Top Gun
Gooose

Would we have to put brake lights and blinkers on our boats to fish about the blacktop???

Fishhead5

I've watched guys in Tillamook fishing for salmon in a couple feet deep water out in the riverside pastures. The fish never seem to be interested on biting, likely because they are in the mode of just surviving the flood. Other's go after them a little more aggresively .

Some ethical people help some that get stranded in puddles after the rivers come down to get them back into the river in decent shape. I've never tried fishing flood waters, but it would be interesting to plunk or slowly work a large Spin N Glo and eggs behind bankside tree trunks and boulders that are normally up the bank away from the river, and now may have fish holding right behind them.

RT

Did anyone happen to download the photo from the paper? I'd like to add it to my wallpaper.