No...not damn schedules...LOL.

Does anyone know if the PSE or ?? puts out a schedule of when they plan to generate power?

Reason being, if you check out the Baker power plant, they have been turning the thing on at 0600 and shutting it down about 2 hours later..and every time that happens the fish down here below the mouth of the Baker go into lockjaw mode, due to the sudden 2 ft. rise, then fall, of the river.

http://waterdata.usgs.gov/wa/nwis/uv?station=12193500

Would be great to know when to sleep in, and when to get up at O'dark thirty.

Mike

I have looked for the same kind of info and found nothing. I looked around the Seattle City Light website for info on the upper dams. Would be nice to know if it's worth taking the boat up before I go.

Mike,

No. Neither Seattle City Light nor Puget Sound Energy publish advance generation plans. First, if they had them, it would be proprietary information that they wouldn't want to share with their competitors. Second, they constantly make changes in energy generation and purchases according to instantaneous market conditions. Having said that, however, they do follow some general approaches based on water supply and any fish protection flow requirements.

PSE has been using a generation/flow strategy to try to avoid a repeat of the drastic 2001 dewatering of salmon redds that occurred. Because the reservoirs are full at the end of the summer recreation season from the spring/summer snow melt, PSE begins drafting the reservoirs just prior to significant chinook spawning in mid-September. Then they are trying to hold flows low during the chinook spawning period until mid-November. This helps prevent having chinook salmon spawn at higher elevations due to Baker flow contributions that cannot be sustained through the egg incubation period. However, all that rain in the first half of September interferred with plans, and now they are generating in short spurts to get rid of extra water, without keeping the river high long enough for chinook to key in on the higher flow and spawn at those higher elevations we want them to avoid. You can probably expect this pattern to be followed until PSE gets the Baker reservoirs down to the desired level for this time period. Sorry if that is what is putting fish off the bite.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Salmo:

Thanks for your response on this, and, as always, you shared a few angles of the issue that most would not consider. I would never have thought that the "competition" knowing when SCL was planning to generate power would make any difference...guess it's a competitive world.

As to killing the bite when they begin to generate and then stop, the fluctuation at my place is about 18" vertical.

In thinking about the other threads where folks are talking about the Coho hitting better on the downward side of a river dropping into shape...well, this one "drops into shape" at least twice a day here..:-)

Was out this morning at daybreak, and there was -0- activity until close to 8 am, when the Baker had been on for about an hour. Fish started to roll...and I caught one that I knew had seen a number of previous offerings and declined to dine on any of them. Water had 4'+ vis., but instead of the little DN she took a big pink/chrome spoon (about #5 size).

Go figure..just when ya think you have them where you want them....

Mike