Cold, High Water At The Flint Today

We met at the farmers' market parking lot a little after 1 today to run the driftnets at the Flint, with Brian, Robert, Jeremy, Douglas and myself. It was a sunny, cold day, about 5 deg. C, with a steady north wind. The water was markedly higher and faster than last time. In the photo below you can see fresh debris in the tree branches at the upper left; that was from about 12 cm of rain a week ago that flooded local rivers. The shallow area along the bank in the photo has always been exposed on past trips. Luckily there were five of us today, because the current was so strong we had to hold the nets in place for an hour instead of relying on the zinc rods to anchor them. Water temperature was 7 deg. C, which doesn't sound so bad until you've been standing in it for over an hour in uninsulated waders.
The next photo is an awkward shot I took while holding onto one end of the net. The white poles running to the right are Robert's invention to try to stabilize the net by bracing the skinny zinc rods. They helped today because it's easier to hold on to them than the zinc rods, mostly by bracing one against my leg while standing in place. I don't have the exact figure on current flow, but the raw measurement was 447 propeller rotations in one minute, a pretty good clip. Lots of water went through the nets in the hour we held them in place. Water running around and through the net was very turbulent, as you can see.
Finally, here's a view of one our transects. The two nets were set up at two points on the left in this view. High flow has pretty thoroughly scoured the river of any leaves or other debris. And, you can see in the silhouette than I'm in the Australian hat my father gave me. Luckily a leather hat is pretty good at keeping out wind.