Hartsel: The Fairplay Flume has reported in its March 15 edition that Denver Water has decided to drain Antero Reservoir due to severe drought  conditions. The reservoir is a poor storage facility because of how shallow and wide it is. The water loss to evaporation is significant and plans call for storing the water elsewhere. The process will begin April 1 and run through June. Efforts will be made to save as many fish as possible. In 2002 when the lake was last drained truck loads of fish were brought to Eleven Mile. Unfortunately most of the fish will die or become food for the Eagles that will swarm in from miles around. You will not be allowed to watch the Eagle feeding fest as the area will be closed to the public once the draining process begins.

Eleven Mile State Park:  As many of you are aware the Kokanee Salmon fishing has been on the decline at Eleven Mile since Gill Lice was introduced in 2006. Although CPW has continued to stock the reservoir since then with almost 900,000 fish annually except for 2012 where the lake only received 450,000  it appears they are prepared to stop since there does not seem to be any let up in the extreme mortality rates seen here. Oddly enough other lakes that have Salmon with Gill Lice don’t see large numbers die off like they do at Eleven Mile. That means they intend to let all the salmon here die off before trying again. We are looking at many years before we see Kokanee return here. In the very short term we believe this winter will be fairly decent for salmon in the two and three year range. Only time will tell.