Gunpowder

I meant to share this a week or so ago but got sidetracked (we moved to a new house so that was a pain in the a$$). Anyway, this post was shared on a MD fly fishing Facebook page. The poster apparently works for the Baltimore water authority and is responsible for the releases from Prettyboy Reservoir. The post was in response to questions about the status of the reservoir and when we might see increased flows from the reservoir.

Although the reservoir levels have increased with the recent heavy rains and snowfall, it does not seem like the City and County have any intention of increasing the flows (at least not for fishing purposes). It also is irritating that the idea of “normal” flows is 28-35cfs.

I'm one of the City's reservoir staff and I can answer your question. Without going too much into it, the amount of flow released into the Gunpowder from Prettyboy is (almost always) dictated by the water needs and surface elevation at Loch Raven Reservoir.
Given the drought we were in for most of 2023 we needed to use water from Prettyboy to keep Loch Raven at a surface elevation great enough to maintain the gravity feed the Montebello Water Treatment Plant. As a result of this increased water demand at Loch Raven, Prettyboy was down about 14' from full pool and on December 6th we made the decision to reduce the discharge to the current level of 18.5 cfs in order to allow Prettyboy to recharge. At that time, the recharge rate from ALL of Prettyboy's tributaries combined was still LESS than the amount of water we were releasing at 28 cfs. While not ideal for fishing, reducing the flow to 18.5 cfs has allowed us to conserve as much water as possible at Prettyboy and helps ensure we can provide enough cold water to the trout next summer when it's needed most. The last two storms have raised the water level at Prettyboy considerably (we gained 5 ft since that big storm back in December) but we still have 9 ft to go before Prettyboy is full again.

Yesterday's rain will probably add another 2 ft but the numbers aren't in yet (we collect that data on Thursday so stay tuned). As for when we might increase the flow to a more "normal" 28-35 cfs? I can't answer that. A best-case scenario between now and mid-June would be that we continue to get rain and Prettyboy hits full pool causing natural spillover at the dam. In lieu of that we'll be looking at 18.5 cfs for a while. In closing I'd like to add that the last time we were in this situation was the 2003-2004 season and this year's drought was even worse.
 
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ryansheehan said:
Looks like it's spilling over....
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Good to see and it hopefully should continue this week with the forecasted rains. I haven’t been able to get out for over a month and am desperate to fish somewhere. I was going to take a day off to fish the Savage but it seems to still be raging (it looks like the flows have dropped this morning from 700cfs to 500, but I still can’t see fishing the Savage at that level). I avoided the Gunpowder because it seemed unsporting to fish it at such low levels. But maybe this week will be worthwhile.
 
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bdhoover77 said:
Good to see and it hopefully should continue this week with the forecasted rains. I haven’t been able to get out for over a month and am desperate to fish somewhere. I was going to take a day off to fish the Savage but it seems to still be raging (it looks like the flows have dropped this morning from 700cfs to 500, but I still can’t see fishing the Savage at that level). I avoided the Gunpowder because it seemed unsporting to fish it at such low levels. But maybe this week will be worthwhile.
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That's higher than I like to fish the Savage for sure. With all the rain coming the gunpowder will be too high for a little while.
 
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