How Are Things In The Big Pine Creek Valley?

[Ard]

Hi,

It's been quite some time since I visited your forum group so I thought I'd ask about an area close to my old home to get some discussion started.

I spent more time on the smaller Runs out that way but from time to time could be found a few miles above Blackwell tossing flies. For younger members this back before the Rails to Trails system went up the creek. Back then there were only the rafters and canoe people fishing above Pine Island. It's been a while I guess......

I have been busy all summer and this is the first post here in a while so I look forward to hearing from any members I may know, I'm probably the only Ard you have met.

Ard

 

[purplewoolly]

I'm at a buddies cabin for "bear camp". I decided to try a couple of class A streams instead of hunting for bear. ( gemmies taste better than bear????). Anyway, the first one I checked was dry. The second
One had water but a guy at a camp saw me getting reading to fish and told me it had been bone dry all summer. All that to say I then went to the Pine above Ansonia. Didn't catch anything but the water seemed good. Probably not real helpful but ...

 

[Ard]

So I take it things were dry there this year? I've been moved away since 2004 and sometimes miss the old days back there. I've lived in several states but was born and lived a majority of my years near Williamsport. Now I live half the year at Wasilla Alaska and half at Skwentna which is a remote location off the grid. I still fish a lot and do it for a living here.

This thread says this is my first post but there are others, I have been inactive and am back to scratch. If any one wants info about Alaska just ask.

Things are getting cold here now and I have only one more steelhead trip planned due to ice but below are a few recent catches.

Me with a good rainbow;



My buddy Brent with a nice one;



Those happen but these are the target species this time of year.



This one had some color but was a good fish.



All fish caught swinging flies with 2 hand rods

 

[salvelinus]

I was at my cabin all summer. Potter County was under a drought warning, the surrounding counties under a drought watch. I have never seen the streams that low. The problem was that there was no significant snowpack last winter to charge the aquifers. Rains finally came about a month ago but not much since and the streams are low again.

Those are some nice fish in your pics. Wasilla? Can you see Russia from there like Sarah Palin? :-D

 

[sandfly]

Sal snow pack has nothing to do with the aquifers here. most times the ground is to frozen to allow the water to penetrate. snow melts and runs off to quick. what we need is a warm spring with rain for the aquifers to hold water. we didn't get any and went into a drought in may

 

[Chaz]

Even in other areas of PA there is very little recharge during the winter.

 

[salvelinus]

Every article I read mentions snowmelt. A few feet of snowpack can hold several inches of rainfall equivalent. As the snow slowly melts in the Spring the water is released slowly into the ground, barring any event that causes quick melting. From the wiki article: "Groundwater is recharged naturally by rain and snow melt and to a smaller extent by surface water (rivers and lakes)."

 

[ryansheehan]

I fished big pine and slate run on Saturday, although I've only visited these places a few times they were very low. I was nymphing pine working upstream when a gentleman decided to hop in 30 feet above me and began casting. I continued to work up a little more and had decided to pass behind him and give him my standard line"I would've given you a lot more room". All of the sudden I realized I could cross over to the other side, something that in the past wouldve been impossible. So I continued to work up next to him and then pass him on the other side of the riffle, while I continued to cast. He then looks at me and says" I didn't think anyone would ever be able to cross there". It took it a second to register what a big fat fu that was. "So I put in right in front of you thinking you would need to get out to get by me, cant believe you did that and ruined my plan, I was hoping to push you out and have this water for me". Anyway, I ignored his comment fished the rest of the riffle and headed up to slate. I had some fun with some small wild fish. Very,very low.

 

[Hook_Jaw]

Ryan yeah that sucks when someone jumps in on you especially when there isn't a sole around anywhere else where you can see.

 

[BradFromPotter]

sandfly wrote:
Sal snow pack has nothing to do with the aquifers here. most times the ground is to frozen to allow the water to penetrate. snow melts and runs off to quick. what we need is a warm spring with rain for the aquifers to hold water. we didn't get any and went into a drought in may

Bob,
Where did you get this info from??

with a gradual warmup the snow melt does get into the aquifers to hold water.

but we do need rain to keep afloat.

 

[sandfly]

Effects of Frozen Soil on Snowmelt Runoff and Soil Water Storage at a Continental Scale

The presence of ice in soil dramatically alters soil hydrologic and thermal properties. Despite this important role, many recent studies show that explicitly including the hydrologic effects of soil ice in land surface models degrades the simulation of runoff in cold regions. This paper addresses this dilemma by employing the Community Land Model version 2.0 (CLM2.0) developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and a simple TOPMODEL-based runoff scheme (SIMTOP). CLM2.0/SIMTOP explicitly computes soil ice content and its modifications to soil hydrologic and thermal properties. However, the frozen soil scheme has a tendency to produce a completely frozen soil (100% ice content) [color=CC0033]whenever the soil temperature is below 0°C. The frozen ground prevents infiltration of snowmelt or rainfall, thereby resulting in earlier- and higher-than-observed springtime runoff[/color]. This paper presents modifications to the above-mentioned frozen soil scheme that produce more accurate magnitude and seasonality of runoff and soil water storage. These modifications include 1) allowing liquid water to coexist with ice in the soil over a wide range of temperatures below 0°C by using the freezing-point depression equation, 2) computing the vertical water fluxes by introducing the concept of a fractional permeable area, which partitions the model grid into an impermeable part (no vertical water flow) and a permeable part, and 3) using the total soil moisture (liquid water and ice) to calculate the soil matric potential and hydraulic conductivity. The performance of CLM2.0/SIMTOP with these changes has been tested using observed data in cold-region river basins of various spatial scales. Compared to the CLM2.0/SIMTOP frozen soil scheme, the modified scheme produces monthly runoff that compares more favorably with that estimated by the University of New Hampshire–Global Runoff Data Center and a terrestrial water storage change that is in closer agreement with that measured by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites.

 

[BradFromPotter]

sandfly wrote:
Effects of Frozen Soil on Snowmelt Runoff and Soil Water Storage at a Continental Scale

The presence of ice in soil dramatically alters soil hydrologic and thermal properties. Despite this important role, many recent studies show that explicitly including the hydrologic effects of soil ice in land surface models degrades the simulation of runoff in cold regions. This paper addresses this dilemma by employing the Community Land Model version 2.0 (CLM2.0) developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and a simple TOPMODEL-based runoff scheme (SIMTOP). CLM2.0/SIMTOP explicitly computes soil ice content and its modifications to soil hydrologic and thermal properties. However, the frozen soil scheme has a tendency to produce a completely frozen soil (100% ice content) [color=CC0033]whenever the soil temperature is below 0°C. The frozen ground prevents infiltration of snowmelt or rainfall, thereby resulting in earlier- and higher-than-observed springtime runoff[/color]. This paper presents modifications to the above-mentioned frozen soil scheme that produce more accurate magnitude and seasonality of runoff and soil water storage. These modifications include 1) allowing liquid water to coexist with ice in the soil over a wide range of temperatures below 0°C by using the freezing-point depression equation, 2) computing the vertical water fluxes by introducing the concept of a fractional permeable area, which partitions the model grid into an impermeable part (no vertical water flow) and a permeable part, and 3) using the total soil moisture (liquid water and ice) to calculate the soil matric potential and hydraulic conductivity. The performance of CLM2.0/SIMTOP with these changes has been tested using observed data in cold-region river basins of various spatial scales. Compared to the CLM2.0/SIMTOP frozen soil scheme, the modified scheme produces monthly runoff that compares more favorably with that estimated by the University of New Hampshire–Global Runoff Data Center and a terrestrial water storage change that is in closer agreement with that measured by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites.

Where Groundwater Comes From

Groundwater begins with rain and snow melt that seeps or infiltrates into the ground. The amount of water that seeps into the ground varies widely from place to place according to the type of land surface that is present. In porous surface material that water readily seeps through, such as sand or gravel, 40 to 50 percent of the rain and snow melt may seep into the ground. Seepage into less porous surface material may range from 5 to 20 percent. The remainder of the rain and snow melt runs off the land surface into streams or returns to the atmosphere by evaporation. Seepage into the ground is also strongly influenced by the season of the year. Evaporation is greater during the warm months, including evaporation through plant leaves, known as transpiration. During the cold months, the ground may be frozen, hindering water seepage, and evaporation is less.


Yes if the ground is frozen solid it would prevent water getting in. But normally we get snow before the ground is frozen solid. The snow pack prevents the ground from freezing solid.

 

[Chaz]

On the Allegheny Plateau the bedrock tends to be close to the surface, and because the bedrock is fairly hard and close to the surface, the snow and rain the region gets in the winter runs-off rapidly. If you look at streams flows and compare them to precipitation during the late winter and early spring, you see how quickly streams rise and fall during precipitation events. Most years the run-off season is about 2 to 3 weeks long, and it is earlier in the spring by up to 2 weeks.