We asked Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) Regional Fisheries Manager Jeff Williams for an update of how the fisheries in Region 3 (southwest Virginia) were faring after the impacts of Hurricane Helene.
By Jeff Williams/DWR
Photos by Jeff Williams/DWR
Probably the most hard-hit areas were in Grayson and Washington counties—those areas had severe flooding in some of the streams, primarily some of our cold-water streams, like Whitetop Laurel. Sadly, there were houses lost in that area, and then also the road that that borders Whitetop Laurel, Route 58 was just decimated for about a two-mile stretch. That mainly affects the ability to access the area and the water.
We walked the stream with [the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) representatives] a couple weeks ago, and we saw that the stream had been significantly altered. It had widened in a lot of places where the road had been washed out and it was rerouted in some places. In some areas, there were large amounts of deposition of large cobble and boulders. There were areas that were probably six to eight feet deep of substrate where the water had deposited the rocks and caused the stream to totally reroute. There was also quite a bit of debris in those streams.
Displaced rocks and debris from Helene’s flooding has altered certain waterways.
The areas that were particularly impacted were in Washington County, and some areas in Grayson County—areas like Taylor’s Valley and Damascus. Mostly, it was the smaller streams in those areas. There aren’t that many large rivers in that area, so a lot of these were tributaries, and with the way the storm came through, these smaller streams—especially some of our trout streams—really got hit hard in those areas. Check DWR’s website for up-to-date information about facility and access closures.
In terms of the impacts on the fish, the habitat has definitely been altered, but trout, and especially adult trout, can typically withstand some pretty high flows. They’ll go to the edges of the stream to find refuge from the extreme flows or go to the bottom, get behind current breaks and things like that. They can ride it out pretty well. The young fish are most susceptible to being displaced downstream or impacted more heavily by those types of flows. In the fall, the time the storm hit, species like brown trout and brook trout would be spawning. So, the impact to the habitat, especially spawning habitat, could result in some negative impacts there. We would see the effects of that in the next year or two, with negatively impacted year classes. Species like rainbow trout, which typically are more spring spawners, the spawn would be less likely to be impacted because of the timing. We’ll have to see.
We still won’t know the full extent of the impact on the trout population and wild trout fisheries until next summer, when we go out to do our normally scheduled annual sampling of those waters. Some anecdotal information that we’ve gotten from some of our wild trout streams is that people are back out there fishing where they can access it, and they’re catching fish.
Our stocked trout season was just getting ready to kick off on October 1, and with the damage to the roads, we had some challenges. The U.S. Forest Service immediately closed all lands in two of the districts that were most heavily impacted, the Mount Rogers district and, to a lesser degree, the Clinch Ranger District, in an effort to keep the public safe until they’d evaluated all the damage. So, we had to immediately coordinate with our hatcheries and the Forest Service staff to say we won’t be stocking anywhere on Forest Service land that was impacted. Since that time, the Forest Service has opened up a lot more of their land after they had a chance to get in there and evaluate the risks. We completely understood that not everyone was happy about those closures—the anglers and more so the hunters, because hunting season about to open. But they had to ensure that the public could access the properties safely. DWR’s storm damage information includes updates to trout stocking in the area.
Road damage not only affected some trout stocking, but also has affected access to some fishing areas.
We still have some waters in the most heavily impacted areas of Washington and Smyth counties that we’re not stocking because they’re either still closed or have some kind of impact from the storm. In our trout the hatcheries, we really didn’t lose any significant numbers of fish, even though the Marion hatchery, which is one of our primary trout hatcheries in the area, flooded. The Buller hatchery flooded too, but they didn’t have much in production at the time. And they’re both back up and running. In terms of trout, we’re still up and running in our stocked trout program.
The larger lakes in the area, like South Holston Lake and Claytor Lake, definitely went up in elevation, and along with that they received enormous amounts of debris, especially Claytor Lake, because of the flooding on the New River. That cleanup process is still ongoing. The Corps of Engineers response team has been there, and they’re removing volumes of debris.
Anglers were immediately concerned about what maybe washed into the lake, in terms of chemicals or other pollutants. We did not get any reports of fish kills related to that type of thing in the lakes. There may have been some undesirable stuff coming in, but the volume of water does help to dilute it to some degree. The Department of Environmental Quality was on the scene, collecting a lot of the propane tanks that were floating on the lake. The cleanup continues on those water bodies, and access points are opening back up.
Some good information that we have relates to the New River, which definitely saw record flooding. We had started the annual fish population sampling on the lower New River below Claytor Dam. We had done three days of sampling and the fishery was really looking good. We had to suspend the sampling until after the storm, but it was looking really good, especially in terms of the smallmouth bass population. We saw really good numbers of bass and saw a good size distribution—good numbers of quality fish with some really nice, big smallmouth bass. Along with that, we were seeing what appeared to be a very, strong, smallmouth bass year class that would have been spawned in the spring.
We did get a few reports after the water was up and it started to go back down, that there were some areas that saw a lot of stranding of smallmouth juveniles, as well as some other fish, like sunfish.. But after the water returned to normal and cleared up enough for us to go out and sample about three or four weeks later, even though we were sampling different areas, the catch rates we were seeing in other parts of the river were as good as what we saw before the storm—all sizes of fish. And we were still seeing good numbers of juvenile fish, so it looks like fish in the lower New River fared fairly well from the storm.
The upper New River above Claytor Lake is narrower and did not have the impoundment to somewhat reduce the impact of the flooding. They did get hit pretty hard up there in terms of some of the accesses and habitat, but I would predict that the fisheries up there still fared fairly well, because these species have probably seen bigger floods over the lifetime of the species. This storm was a doozy, but it might not have been the biggest storm they may have ever seen. So I would anticipate that, for the most part, the fisheries fared pretty well in that upper section as well.
We’re still getting questions, and some of the fisheries—especially the wild trout fisheries—we won’t know for sure how they’re doing until the coming year. But it seemed like the worst of it was localized to just a few counties, and we have really good wild trout fisheries in those areas. We’ll definitely be interested in seeing how they fared, but I think we’ll be fine for next year.
Jeff Williams is the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) Regional Fisheries Manager for Region 3, in Southwest Virginia.