Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials have begun monitoring fish in the Cache la Poudre River following Tuesday’s flash flood there.
In a press release, the agency said fish loss has been observed there.
CPW employees will continue to monitor the situation.
If people encounter dead fish along the river, they should not handle the fish and leave them as they lay to let nature take its course, the release stated.
It’s not yet clear how the flooding and sediment will affect fish.
“We will hold off on fish population impact comments until we can collect standardized data,” senior aquatic biologist Jeff Spohn said in the release.
CPW plans to conduct fish surveys on the river in mid- to late-October.
“We went up and looked around the entire canyon on Wednesday,” aquatic biologist Kyle Battige said in the release. “There are dead fish, but to what quantity and where that loss is coming from at the various stretches on the river is not known at this time. There will be impacts and we will try to assess how serious those impacts to the fishery will be in the fall.”
He said the fish he saw on Wednesday were affected by the heavy sediment going into the river from runoff on the Cameron Peak Fire burn zone.
“That can basically suffocate the fish because that amount of sediment and debris prevents the fish from pulling oxygen out of the water,” Battige said. “It is too early to say the true extent, but we saw impacts stretching from Black Hollow Creek all the way down to College Avenue in Fort Collins.”
He said historic data show the river averages 800 to 1,200 trout per mile, depending on the location in the canyon.
Brown trout dominates those population numbers in the Poudre Canyon.
Battige noted that while rainbow trout are mostly sustained through annual stocking efforts, the brown trout population in the Poudre River is self-sustaining. CPW also has the capacity, if it is determined to be warranted, to stock brown trout and rainbow trout in future years.
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Colorado Parks and Wildlife to monitor fish in Poudre River after flooding - Loveland Reporter-Herald
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