Driftnetting At The Flint On Friday, Feb. 4

Friday was a threatening day, with the local weather people besides themselves talking about threats of ice, snow, horrible rain, etc. But luckily for us they were largely wrong. By the time we went out to our regular driftnetting site on the Flint in the afternoon there was a light, irregular spitting of rain, and air temperature was about 40 deg. F, with no wind. So standing out in the middle of the river for a little over an hour wasn't too horrible. And the river was maybe 15 cm lower than our last netting, so we were able to set up both nets in the places we've used before. The surface water flow was about 1 meter/second, at 6 cm off the bottom it was about 0.5 m/sec, and water temperature was 6 deg. C. Footing was tricky in the main current, but no one fell, although Doug had a close call. The following photos document the basic work, starting with a shot of the older net being held stably within Robert's PVC frame along with the zinc dowels.

Here's my de rigeur photo of the Winchester Road bridge looking upstream. You can see the low rock formation rising up in front of the bridge just to the right of the photo's center. As long as we can see most of that rock peak, the river is workable. We also watched as deputies chased down some people who ran into their speed trap to the left of this view, on the west bank of the river.

Robert and Doug are able to chat while holding a net in place. Ruth repaired the newer net they're using, and it held up in the deeper, faster site with Robert and Doug's help. Both nets had a fine patina on their exposed surface from entrained clay silt in the river, which was more turbid than usual after recent storms.