Click the link to read the article on the Steamboat Pilot & Today website (Suzie Romig). Here’s an excerpt:
October 8, 2024
As volunteers with Trout Unlimited Yampa Valley Fly Fishers, husband and wife Steve Randall and Kathy McDonald were happy to help with the release of some 20,000 rainbow trout fingerlings into the Yampa River on Monday…Randall and other volunteers helped Colorado Parks & Wildlife staff carry, release and disperse into the Yampa River many tubs of squirming 3-inch trout raised at the fish hatchery in Glenwood Springs. The small fish were dispersed where CPW supervised $500,000 is aquatic habitat improvement work this summer at the upstream reach of Chuck Lewis State Wildlife Area…
Randall called it “so cool” to see the newly restored section of the river that before was full of “old cars, junk and eroded streambanks silting in different places.”
[…]
CPW Aquatic Biologist Billy Atkinson said with rapid initial grown of young trout, the released fingerlings should be 10 inches and ready to challenge anglers in about two years. Standing along the river in waders, Atkinson explained that a previous restoration project in 2008 in the river section was not successful for sustained habitat for bigger fish and not structurally sound. The previous project failed so much so that the river was threatening to reroute and cut west away from the fixed point of a bridge downstream, he said. The redesigned restoration project that started in mid-July included constructing multiple rock structures to direct stream energy away from banks, adding bank full bench features with coir fiber wrapped sod and willow vegetation mats, adding an inner berm design feature to help fish during lower flows, regrading vertical eroding banks and removing transverse and mid-channel bars to reshape the channel bed to appropriate dimensions. The project is intended to prevent further degradation that would result in more costly maintenance, additional loss of habitat and continued contributions of excessive gravel to the river system, according to CPW.
