Spring brown questions

[riverdog]

If I understand correctly about the beaver dam impeding their passage back down stream I would think that the swam up to spawn and then the damn went up and the can't get back down with the low flows as HFT suggested. That reminds me of a similar circumstance I encountered 3 or 4 years ago in the spring during a drought year. I was fishing a small trib to a big reservoir and not catching much when I fished a large hole below a 6 ft tall beaver damn that blocked their migration up stream to spawn Very little water was coming thru the damn and none spilling over. I ended up hooking into 6 or 7 cutts 17 to 26 inches long (this probably gives away which reservoir the stream drained into, and no the stream wasn't closed to fishing yet). The fishing was slow only 1-2/hr but I just couldn't leave with all those big fish. The water wasn't very clear so you could only see the fish when the rarely fed on the surface. I don't know how many fish where in there but it must have been a ton because when I tried to net one fish that didn't run down stream but stayed in the hole I ended up netting another fish than the one I had hooked. I quickly dumped it out of the net when I realized it wasn't my hooked fish. Then when I went to net it again I landed another fish than the one I hooked. I was just as shocked the 2nd time thinking it was just a total fluke thing the first time. Anyway the third try I did actually land my hooked fish. HFT, I do believe the Bonneville cutts over in the Salt Creek (Thomas Fork) actually do swim down stream upto 25 miles before swimming up stream to the Coaltang and Hobble Creek (if I recall correctly) to spawn. I ran into a few TU people there catching and recording their unusually migration patterns a few years back.
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