The flash floods that raged through southeastern Minnesota last weekend, causing seven deaths and widespread destruction to homes, roads, bridges and businesses, also altered the region's renowned trout streams.
The rainfall and flooding were historic. In many areas an estimated 13 to 17 inches fell in 24 hours more than has ever been recorded in the state turning placid streams into raging torrents that blasted everything in their path, including bridges and roads.
Some of the area's most popular trout streams were altered drastically. Creek bottoms were scoured, habitat destroyed. Some fish were washed downstream and left stranded in remote pools of water. Others could have been killed by the infusion of warm water polluted by farm chemicals, fuel and manure from feed lots.
Still, officials are hopeful.
"The trout population is amazingly resilient," said Steve Klotz, Department of Natural Resources area fisheries supervisor in Lanesboro. "I'm hoping the fish population withstood this event."
Klotz and his workers were trying last week to determine the extent of the damage and the impact to the region's fisheries. It will take weeks. Officials soon will begin surveying fish populations in some streams using electroshock devices.
But a cursory inspection shows a changed landscape.
"Streams like Rush Creek and the Middle Branch and South Branch of the Whitewater River, and Garvin Brook are absolutely devastated," Klotz said. "The habitat doesn't even resemble what it did before."
One example: "There's one spot in Rush Creek that used to be 15 to 20 feet wide with a deep hole," said Jeff Broberg, a geologist and president of the Minnesota Trout Association who lives near St. Charles, Minn. "It's now 80 feet wide with 2 inches of water."
Said Klotz: "The streams now are incredibly wide, and the depths are really shallow in places. There were places in Rush Creek where the flood plain was 400 feet of water across the valley."
The concern is that the wider, shallower waters won't be hospitable for trout.
Said Broberg: "We may not have seen an event like this in 1,000 years. It's just incredible. The water filled the Whitewater Valley at Beaver from bluff to bluff, 3 or 4 feet deep.
"It has totally flattened the stream bottoms, so there's no holes left. It filled them in with gravel, so we have flat water everywhere.
"It's amazing."
News not all negative
Many other areas received only 5 or 6 inches of rain. That caused some flooding, but the damage to those streams was minimal.
Klotz said the heaviest rains fell in the area of Interstate 90 from Rochester to Winona, inundating streams in portions of Fillmore, Winona and Houston counties.
"The streams along that belt really took a whooping," he said.
outdoors
resize text 
Newspaper Subscriptions
eEdition
RSS
Newsletters
