Last Winter 2020-21 Boise Valley Fly Fishers completed its first gravel augmentation project on the Boise river. We chose a side-channel between Glenwood Bridge and the head of Eagle island which is a section that IDF&G’s trout fry surveys show has been “under-performing” compared to upstream sections where Trout Unlimited has added gravel in years past. Sunroc donated 15 cubic yards of gravel and the Boise Flood District helped us place it in the side channel. BVFF plans to do maintenance and improvements on this project to continue improve trout spawning habitat and has made a Wild Trout Habitat sign that will be installed on September 25th. If you are able to help with the installation, please sign-up at the www.bvff.com events page.

While working on the gravel augmentation project we asked the Flood District Manager, Mike Dimmick, about how they navigate their large machinery through the river and if they are able to avoid brown trout redds. He said they run their machinery throughout the Boise river in the Fall and Winter to remove accumulations of woody debris to maintain a clear channel to reduce property damage during high river flows. And that whenever possible they avoid driving in the river channel, but unfortunately, they don’t know how to identify or avoid the spawning areas. However, he said they want to avoid damaging the trout habitat and would be willing to try and avoid them if they knew where they were.

BVFF ran a quick trial project to identify “redd zones” in a short stretch of the Boise River and the Flood District reported back that they were able to use the information to avoid those areas. Based on the success of that trial, BVFF will be expanding efforts to create a map of brown trout spawning areas on the Boise River for the Flood District to use during their maintenance work. We are looking for volunteers to float the Boise River on Saturday October 23rd and Sunday October 24th to identify active brown trout redds. If you are interested in participating, please sign up at www.bvff.com . Volunteers need to provide their own float-craft and have some experience floating low rivers as well as know how to use a GPS. If you have questions about the project reach out to Troy Pearse at conservation@bvff.com.