Musconetcong River to get channel restoration on lower river

[Bucksnbows]

Just a heads up that we will be in the lower river tomorrow through Thursday or Friday restoring the channel above the now removed Finesville dam site off Mount Joy and Bellis Roads between Holland Twp. and Pohatcong Twp. Come out to see the work, but no need to call the DEP when you see yoo-hoo colored water dumping in to the big D.

This is channel restoration using a CAT 325 track machine to restore the channel that was degraded by nearly 200 years of having a dam collect sediment in this upstream area. We also got the landowner to sell this property with a closing sometime this year to allow public access via Musconetcong WMA land for fishing. Once restored, we should see brown trout coming in to spawn from the Delaware later this fall. This will be some nice fishing water once we're done on general regulations water on the lower Musky.

[runum n gunum]

Nice Brian

[Bucksnbows]

Some video from today's work.  We spent 95% of today hop scotching boulders up the channel nearly 1,500' to where we need them for tomorrow's work.  This will go quickly now with a finish date of either late Thursday or Friday by midday.  More action shots tomorrow with some stills of before and after.

 

[BowhunterNJ]

Wow that's great! Would be very cool for browns to move up from the Big D! Nice work!

[Bucksnbows]

Wow that's great! Would be very cool for browns to move up from the Big D! Nice work!

 

We're thinking this new stretch will hold spawning browns this coming fall.  Tomorrow we'll be making our first real major habitat changes.  The video attached was at the very end of the day getting the channel ready for an upstream facing boulder weir with a deep pool below it that tails out into a riffle.  That tailout will have great spawning gravels and the proper depth and flows that spawning trout like.  I'll shoot some much shorter video and plenty of stills.  I took a lot of still shots today, but they don't mean anything until I can post the "after" shot as well.

[runum n gunum]

Great picture and love what your doing for the river

[Bucksnbows]

Here's more from today's work:

 

 

 

This is what the channel looked like before our work...

[Bucksnbows]

Some video from today....

 

[BowhunterNJ]

Very nice work! Cool to see the progress!

[Bucksnbows]

We're done today with this project.  This means a full 1 mile of the river between Finesville and the Delaware River have been restored along with 4 dams removed or lowered.  Two dams were failed wooden coffer dams (failed in the 1980s) that were fully removed.  One dam above those two in Riegelsville was lowered and it was stone and built in the late 1700s.  Then in November of 2011, our Partnership removed the Finesville dam and this week's work was the completion in the river of that project.  We just have some trees and willow cuttings to plant to finalize it all.  But now trout as well as anadromous species like river herring, American shad, striped bass and Americal eels (catadromous) can swim freely up river to spawn out of the Delaware.  

[Gruntmaster]

Very nice work. 

Thanks.