Low Colorado River water level means no fishing as conditions deteriorate. Despite all the recent El Nino influenced rain and snow, the water levels of small lakes and backwaters connected to the river are extremely low.
The Colorado River is controlled by a series of man made dams and network of canals. By the time any water reaches the lower Colorado, there’s not much left. The exploding populations of southwest American cities are using more water than there is in the river.
Since the snow is still unmelted in the mountains and nearly all the recent rain has run off into the ocean, the water levels in the overall Colorado River basin are low. This small reservoir, where the water level changes constantly, is unusually low.
What’s going on here? Running the water this low definitely has a negative impact on anything alive that’s in the lake. It’s hard to get a straight answer about anything from the government agencies that “manage” this area and the Colorado River and there could be repercussions for asking. We will just have to speculate about the cause.
A pump or gate may be defective and all the water drained out of the lake. There may be some sort of ecological disaster, something in the lake or in the water they are trying to eradicate. We know there is an expanding population of milfoil, an aquatic plant, in nearby waters connected to this lake. Milfoil grows in water less than twenty feet deep, which looks to be about how much the water in this lake has been removed. Perhaps the lake has been drained in the hope of killing any milfoil.
It’s been a tough early spring opening for local fishermen, unusually cold river water and windy weather have limited the fishing to hardly anything. Now there’s no water in the lake.