Thursday, May 15, 2008
Laurel Bed Lake being drained; no money to repair dam
Bill Cochran
Recent columns
No one is writing an obituary for Laurel Bed Lake just yet. But it can be said that the scenic 330-acre impoundment near Saltville that began more than 40 years ago as a high-altitude bog is rapidly returning to that state.
There are a couple of seepages in the dam of this Department of Game and Inland Fisheries public fishing impoundment, and while they aren’t massive, they also aren’t the kind you can plug with a finger or two.
The fact is -- and get ready for a shock -- it may take as much as $2 million to cover the repairs, according to Gary Martel, DGIF fish division chief.
The department says it doesn’t have that kind of money for dam repairs; truth is, multiple millions are needed to repair a bunch of DGIF impoundments across the state, and the funds just aren't there.
So Laurel Bed is being drained. It is expected to be as dry as a bog can be by late July. The water level already has dropped to the point that anglers no longer can use the concrete boat ramp. Small boats now must be put over the bank.
Laurel Bed was impounded in 1967, its major purpose to augment the flow in Big Tumbling Creek, site of Virginia’s first fee-fishing trout area established five years earlier. The popularity of Big Tumbling was soaring as growing numbers of anglers came to cast to the gorge where waterfalls tumble into large, deep, boulder-strewn pools stocked heavily with trout.
In short time, Laurel Bed Lake won its own fans. It could be enjoyed just for its unparalleled setting at an elevation of 3,600 feet tucked into the secluded 25,000-acre, state-owned Clinch Mountain Wildlife Management Are. Its shoreline is clothed with aspen, cherry and hemlock.
The featured attraction was beauty of a different kind: state record-size brook trout that gained growth rapidly after being stocked as fingerlings. The trout fishing through the early 1980s was good enough to lure anglers from as far away as the Roanoke Valley. The brookies, some exceeding 3 pounds, took on the dark color of the lake’s water, yet were garnished with bright red specks encased in sky-blue halos.
For a number of exciting years, Laurel Bed Lake was the place to catch citation brook trout until the fishery began to fall apart. For one thing, some fishermen insisted on illegally releasing rock bass into the lake, fish that competed with the trout and slowed their growth. Compounding that stupidity were problems with high acidity and low oxygen and summertime temperatures that were marginal for brook trout.
DGIF officials drained the lake in 1996 to remove the rock bass and make repairs. A helicopter dumped about 50 tons of limestone sand onto the upper lake and its tributary, Laurel Bed Creek, in an effort to lower the pH.
Fish officials experimented with a number of strains of brook trout from as far away as Canada and the Mohi Indian Reservation in Washington, but the trout fishery never regained its glory days of trophy catches, although good numbers of trout have been maintained in the lake. The most recent attraction has been trophy smallmouth bass, a species stocked to help control the rock bass that outlaws insisted on putting into the lake.
Fishing is being permitted as the lake is being drained. The DGIF has removed the catch and release regulation on smallmouth bass to allow harvest of this species. Anglers will be permitted up to five smallmouth bass per day with no size restrictions; six trout per day with a 7-inch minimum size limit; and rock bass without size or creel limit.
Martel says his department gives the restoration of the lake a “highest priority” status. “The Department has every intention to repair the dam and to re-establish the fishery as soon as adequate funds can be set aside for this renovation project,” the agency said in a news release.
Just when this will occur is uncertain, but at best it will be several years before a fishery can be rebuilt. In the meanwhile, the loss of the lake could impact the flow of Big Tumbling Creek and cause the fee-fishing program to be discontinued during dry weather.
