Does anybody know if Choke is getting any of these huge rainfalls?

The lake level site hasn't updated yet today; but as of yesterday there wasn't any change. It came up 1' a few weeks ago and I'm guessing it might come up another 1' from the rain the past few days.

Very little. Lake is up a couple of inches.

http://www.waterdatafortexas.org/reservoirs/individual/choke-canyon

Choke in bad shape, lot of my customers live in that area and have told me they have never seen it that low.
Some of those guys have had a lot to say about the health of that lake. Supposedly a seismograph was conducted on it last fall.

Don't know if its true but that rumor has been persistent.

What kind of problems is it having? Other than lack of rain. What was the reason for the seismograph?

I don't get it. Report I checked said the lake level came up 0.07 foot in the last 24 hours, which is about 0.8 inches. The records I checked indicated that the lake itself had over an inch fall on it, plus the Frio and San Miguel drainages got anywhere from 1-4 inches anywhere from just north of the lake to about 20 miles up stream. Where did the water go?

Lets hear about the seismograph secrets!!!

Guys, be patient! The headwaters of the Frio start all the way miles upstream in the hills above Uvalde and Garner Park area. If there was a lot of rain up there which it looked like it was, that water can take anywhere from five to seven days or so to reach the lake.
Bad news is I didn't hear of any flash flooding up in that region so it may not rise but a couple of feet.
Keep watch on the daily reports and listen for any reports of flooding on the Frio.

We will most likely get 1-3 feet out of this last round of rain. The upper watershed still hasn't seen the rain we need for anything more significant, just like Jimbo said.

As far as the seismograph, you can bet that was related to exploration related to the Eagle Ford, which Choke sits right square in the middle of. No rain in the watershed for years and if you think the lake levels were due to seismographs, you need a tin foil hat.

I just want to know what rumor has the seismographs did..

I wonder if maybe any water has been pumped out of the lake/river for drilling/fracking? Illegal sure, but im sure in bfe middle of nowhere nobody knows and therefore cares.

Doubt it. I'm pretty sure the lakes is low from 10 years of drought.

A couple guys told me they were fishing at Choke and there were round floats about 36" diameter across the lake with a module in each float and they were stretched out like a chain. An individual tending to them told the men it was a seismograph and that is what was told to me from one of the men.
Thru the past 3 years there have been rumors about a well was fracked that runs underneath the lake and another about water wells being drilled close to it and the water being sold for frack jobs.
So I dont know and what is true and what aint. I do know that Mathis Lake is staying a lot fuller now than it used to be and that is one reason Choke is down. And of course the drought.

Good lord the rumors run rampant with stupidity! The lake was graphed yes. It was to see how much oil was under the lake.... And the answer is.... A bunch! Previous owner has mineral rights still, not the state.


The lake was down 26' several years ago (before fracking!) and the lake filled up due to a massive flood east of Uvalde. Small recharge zone and drought has caused the low water.



A different river fills up Mathis and it filled a few months ago due to another flood. Different rivers fill each lake!

Grout pretty much hit it on the head, but yeah, Lake CC being up has absolutely zero to do with the Choke Canyon water level. In fact, the City of CC has repeatedly stated that they prefer to keep the water in Choke Canyon because it is deeper, and therefore, they lose less of it to evaporation.

When a lake gets nearly zero rain in its watershed for 10 years, it goes down drastically. Nothing to do with fracking, or illegal stealing of water, or aliens from Mars.

This is like the guy one time when the fishing started to go South who swore up and down it was due to the bass being scared of the shotgun blasts from duck hunters, not the tournies, overfishing, lack of grass, etc etc.

Good Lord, people.

I think they're keeping choke low so they can finish the bridge at Tawakoni.

Grout scout before you start slamming me about my post read it closer. No where in my post did I say Choke Canyon water was used to refill Mathis Lake. Never mentioned a river! Read this please : [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choke_Canyon_Reservoir]
Corpus pulls water out of Choke as well as Mathis for drinking water. Two years ago Mathis was a swamp and now the water level has been higher there for a year. My intention was to suggest that Corpus could be using more of Choke Canyon water than Mathis Lake water.
There are already old oil and gas wells in Choke Canyon before it was filled, as to the river it is Frio and the creek is San Miguel. I go by it twice a week.

How in the hell could the city pull water from choke but not CC? There is no direct line from choke to the city. I'm starting to wonder if you understand how the CC water supply works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choke_Canyon_Reservoir Please read this especially paragraph 2 called uses.

Then read this:

http://www.corpuschristiwater.com/Assets...rpusChristi.pdf

CCR IS CHOKE CANYON RESEVOIR AND LCC IS LAKE CORPUS CHRISTI

Then of course you can read this:
http://www.cctexas.com/government/water/...y-history/index

You can see that 14% of the water that leaves Choke to go to Lake Corpus is lost and not recovered. Probably a lot of waste for such a precious commodity in south Texas.

Like I posted before there have been so many rumors and stories about Choke Canyon that it is crazy. Maybe a third of them are true. Who knows?

Did not mean to offend anyone.

I hope Choke Canyon gets bank full again and I can catch a gaspergou or a big old yellar.

When CC built Choke they knew it would never serve as a reliable water supply. It was designed to supplement Mathis and that's all. It is in the absolute worse place, the drainage is too small and too dry.

Lake CC has been recharged 2 of the last 3 times from water from the Atascosa (including this most recent rise), with the other time being big rains near Cotulla and Carrizo Springs. Somehow the Atascosa/Plesanton floods and the Nueces/Cotulla floods totally missed the small Frio drainage which splits them.
The Hill Country hasn't had hardly any rains in the past 5 years that have made it all the way down either river and the recent Leakey rains are nice, but probably just looking at a 1-2' rise of Choke if even that. You need all the Rivers (Frio, Sabinal and Leona) and Creeks (Hondo, Seco and San Miguel) at major flood stage for 2+ days at the same time to fill Choke back up. Everything is set up right now as far as saturation, just need a widespread 6-8 inch rain up there to finish everything off.

Well there is nice storm camped out over Uvalde tonght it's has been there for about 1hr or so, lets see what happens.

Here is a graph of the frio from this past weeks rain

Uvalde and Leakey got a good pounding last night so maybe this will help somewhat. You guys stay out of my honey hole if Choke comes back up. LOL.

Wait, I thought all the fish died in Choke?

I remember the shotgun blast theory thread. That was as funny as putting air bags on the bottom of Fork to keep it at a constant level.

Some good rain in the hill country over night. To bad all the area has been so dry the ground will soak it up before it hits Choke.

Medina came up two feet in the last 48 hours and the rain pretty much stayed over its recharge all night. I really hope Medina gets up to 50% the year.

I will need the gps coords of said "honey hole" to make sure that I stay out.

Going to be interesting to see how much all these lakes come up, hopefully some of you fellas have been down to choke lately so see all of the hidden features and why certain spots hold fish.

I'm rooting for Medina as well.

LaPryor had 8-10 inches last night. That will all go into Nueces and strait to lake Corpus C. 15 miles to the east and it would have been in Frio watershed. Frio watershed got pretty nice rains. Maybe some will make it to Choke.

In Pleasanton now and the Atascosa river is running. Severe storms southwest of Pleasanton 6 inches of rain per hour in some areas. Choke gonna get some water.
Lets all hope that this storm does not cause any damage or fatalities.

Yep, but Atascosa doesn't run into Choke (just in case you didn't know that). Corpus Christi ought to fill again though.

Yeah Atascosa river don't do nothing for Choke, but the storm southwest of Pleasanton will. Water running thru the Atascosa is a rare sight these days.
I try to get by the 99 bridge today and check it out.

Grout-Scout choke comes up to where honey hole #1 is, I will take you an show you where its at. Hammer time. LOL.

Here is another update

Its dumping right over the lake right now. So at least we'll get that runoff too.

Bad thing is, that chart Will posted shows the river isn't even close to flood stage and it won't be unless another big storm pops up.

I can assure you, the TCEQ is all over who is permitted to pump water out of what pits/ponds/lakes and how much of it. They control volumes, when/where they can be pumped from, etc. Therefor, if any "illegal pumping" is being performed (can pretty much assure you there isn't), they will pay the price...and on Choke, it could be in the form of a hungry alligator.

Pic of the river in the Bass Fishing section. Threads labeled "choke canyon"

As long as they haven't closed hwy 16 going into Tilden then Choke isn't going to get water to bring it up close to full.

Yep, I remember when it filled last time it was over 16. It was quite a site to see and the lake was coming up about 6" an hour. We had trotlines out and it was insane with all of the debris and fire ants floating in the water.

Rivers at 19' in Tilden, still not flood stage but way better than nothing.

Drove Hwy 90 going to San Antonio yesterday. The dry Frio, Frio river, dinner creek, blanco creek, Nolan creek, Sabinal river, elm creek, and squirrel creek all had water flowing. And it all those creeks and rivers flow into choke.

It will take a few days for all that water to make it down to Choke and hopefully well get some more!

Hill Country getting blasted again tonight. Hopefully sits on top of them and drops 5+ inches in the next couple hours.
There is still a ton of water coming down the Nueces and Atascosa and Lake CC is pretty much full...wish there was a way to send that over to Choke!

Yep, more rain the watershed.

This is good news for Choke though even though it's not into the watershed of the Frio because they let a lot of water flow down to the bays to flush them out with fresh water.
Once the bays get what they need and the lake CC is full everyone's happy and they'll or should leave Choke alone.
Just checked the daily resorvior levels and as of right now with a lot more on the way, Lake CC is .55 feet low!
Choke is still -25.92 feet low, which I'm sure it will come up a few more feet. Choke holds a lot of water, and it takes a lot to fill that lake when it spills out into all those flats and coves, but there will be plenty of new water to fish for sure!

I hope the dam master has the gates closed. I looked at the river flow on the backside of the dam and there is quite a bit of water there, hopefully it's just back flow from the atascosa river???

Yeah, the Atascosa is at the 3rd highest level in it's recorded history. It's a shame all that water will go straight to the bay (the Lake CC flood gates are open and will be for a while), but maybe that will satisfy the amount of fresh water the bays need for a while.

Choke up .50 since yesterday.

Thanks for the updates Jimbo. I was down there last week with friends, and on Friday it had to rain 3-4 in. Lake needs to come up a lot, sure was a long walk from the cabin to the water.

Years ago before the dam was finished I had gotten the opportunity to tour the lake with a TPWD biologist. We drove the lake bottom and I remember seeing the trickle of water which is the Frio and I thought to myself, if that is the river that is feeding this lake it's going to take a long time to back up enough water to call it a lake.
To my surprise it only took a couple of heavy rains to fill it up and the timing couldn't have been better.
I've seen it fill a couple of times since then, so it just needs a lot of rain to happen in the right area and it will be a full lake again.

Jimbo were you down there when TP&W lifted limits because they thought they were going to lose all the fish stocked?

Would have been cool to see that before it filled up. I know just driving around out there, there are all kinds of things just sitting out there in the middle of nowhere. All of a sudden you will see a weird looking line of small stumps that turns into a submerged barbed wire fence as you get closer. Old concrete water troughs etc. One thing that is neat about the fluctuating water level is it replenishes the brush. When the lake was low for a decade or more it had a chance to grow up with new stuff when it filled again.

Yeah I've seen enough things over the last few years to know to say a prayer when driving through certain areas. Freaking concrete block or trough in the middle of a flat back in possum, it would punch a hole in the boat in 1/2 a second. Old iron well heads sticking out. Concrete piers sticking out. T-post... (I hit one of those a few years ago)

I say a prayer when taking the boat off the trailer, wether the lake is full or low, so much stuff out there you just never know!

Yep, I was walking the banks but it was difficult to reach the water in most areas because of the heavy brush around the shoreline of what was basically a creek. The lower end toward the dam was dug out and the bank was high and steep.
Calaham was the town that got flooded and they just moved it back up toward higher ground where it is now.
Lots of concrete cisterns and fence posts, steel, old oil wells and you name it.
There was a big push by the bass clubs and others to leave as much brush in the lake as possible. The original plan had called for the majority of brush to be bulldozed out but the plan was then changed to leave most in place.
Now with most of the wood rotted away there are a zillion stumps out there that are just under the water line.
My memory isn't all that great, but I think they had planned on taking out some of those hazards but the lake came up so fast they had to scrap that plan!

Would have been nice if they cleared out some boat lanes on the upper/Western part of the lake. It's pretty much impossible to get to 99 or Opossum from Mason Point without risking your boat. Guess they could always do that now with most of that area high and dry.

I know where a couple old house foundations are in the back of Calliham. Only problem is, since I found them, there has never been water on them.

There are a couple "lakes" or ponds you can get into on the west side of possum when the lake is full.

And one time while fishing a football jigs on old 72 near huisache island about 6 yrs ago I caught an old tv antenna, one of the big ones with a bunch of branches. Buddy reminded me of that recently.

When it was full and no lower than about 5 ft a lot of use to run from calliham all the way up to 99 no problems, but looking at it now and really seeing whats out there with no real defined channel is scary.

We use to run all the way from caliham to the FM road bridge up san Miguel creek when the lake was full.

As big a pain in the rear as the trees can be I like the lake how it is. Follow the river channel, that's your boat lane.

At what level will South Shore Ramp reopen?

Good question. I think it will take 5'ish more feet from when I recall them closing it.

Now that the lake has been low and you see what all is below you, moments like those become one of those prayer moments, lol.

Will they re-open south shores? Seems like they had it shut down to 1 lane already because of it washing out.

They shut it down when the end of the ramp was exposed. You can see that on Google Earth.

5" of rain at Leakey this morning should help Choke.

A lot of water coming down the dry frio river at Reagan Wells.

All of the rivers and creeks feeding the frio have a buttload of water in them right now with rain still falling.

Damn, Hondo creek is running at 42000 CFS.

I'm not seeing that on my site, but seeing where the Frio at Concan will crest at over 20k cfs and the Sabinal is up near 8k cfs. If that much is coming down Hondo Creek, then Choke has a chance to get a lot of water.

Good news!im down here in rockport with the family enjoying this nice breeze

Going to be real interesting. Hopefully, it gets a better boost this time!

http://waterdata.usgs.gov/tx/nwis/uv/?site_no=08200000&PARAmeter_cd=00065,00060

That's a lot of water.

Medina Lake went up 20 foot overnight. I'd be happy if Choke did half that after all this is over with.

River data:

http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/index.php?wfo=ewx

Not sure if this will work or not; but if it does it's a pic of the Frio in Concan.


https://m.facebook.com/ConcanTexas/photo...57&__tn__=E

It's gonna come up this time. I saw those pics grout, lots of water on the way.

I'm gonna stop by on way home and snap some pics.

how's she looking?

It'll be in the morning.

I for one know that the water takes a while to get to the lake so it will be interesting to see.
The lake since last week, not yesterday came up only .83 which is a little puzzling?
Someone at the dam holds all the power, so lets see if it becomes a lake again!

There's a lot of water coming the Frio, but it will go up and back down quickly which won't be enough to make much of a dent. We need a 1-2 week long flood event like the Nueces is seeing, not a quick 1-2 day flood like it looks is coming.
My guess would be a 5' rise in the lake unless they get more heavy rain up there this week (which is already showing up on the radar). 5' of new water would still flood some vegetation which would help out the bass.

There is water coming down the Frio and Dry Frio. I came down highway 90 today from Del Rio and all of the rivers and creeks that cross the highway had significant flow.

There must be a lake between Choke and the Frio in the hill country that we dont know about that is filling up with water, or giant hole in the ground. Where does all that water go? I saw flooding in Concan/Uvalde area a couple of years ago and as a result, Choke came up 0.4 ft.

I posted the pics over in the bass fishing section

As has been stated multiple times, it soaks into some major aquifers, which are still far below normal levels, so they are probably drinking a lot of it up.

A view of the Frio River in Concan from #KENS5 viewer Lucy. Share your weather photos with @KENS5

Yipes, that baby is rolling! And as always lately, a big storm below Choke putting more water into the Atascosa river.

Checked this mornings reading and it looks like it's only come up 1/2 a foot since a week ago.

http://waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/uv?site_no=08206600

Two possibilities here! One is that water is over the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone and is going into the aquifer, or it just hasn't reached Tilden yet!
I'm going to say it may be both!

San Antonio aquifer reading show 662 at present and up only 11 feet from a month ago at 651. With all the rains in the hill country you would think the aquifer would be bulging at the seams?

You gotta wonder if all that water is going into the aquifer now, how has any water at all been flowing into the lake the last couple of years.

Been hearing rumors that the water is going into the holes left from the fracking. Theories and opinions are running rampant down there.

Looking at river forecasts, there is a surge of water coming down the Frio from the Derby area and should reach Choke tonight or tomorrow.

Fracing takes place 8500 feet below the ground, ain't no way it leaves a hole. Except maybe in Wiscinsin where they mine the frac sand.

Like ChuChu1 said, Tilden will start seeing the Frio rise by tomorrow. San Miguel has been on a pretty solid push and that's the water that is bumping Choke up a little.

It's been dry for so long and only minimal rains have fallen and most of that I'm sure went into the ground by the time it got to Choke.
We will see what happens with the recent flooding, and the results should start to show soon!

Click here and scroll down to the Nueces River Basin to see the USGS flow gauges for real time data.

I have no clue where Derby is but here's the graph from there. Nice big of wall of water coming down!

From what I can tell on the Google Map, Derby is along IH 35 between Pearsall and Dilley. So that gauge is probably somewhere near where the Frio crosses 35.

The Frio has been dry for ten years. The flow goes underground at the Annandale ranch just south of concan. Now that its flowing it has a hundred plus miles of dry holes it needs to fill before it gets to choke. I hope choke benefits from this rise! I fished the sabinal and Frio rivers on 187 south of Sabinal yesterday and both river flows were slowing down and will probably stop flowing in a week if we don't get anymore rain.

People seem to have a hard time grasping the dynamics of the Choke Canyon watershed. First, keep in mind that the lake was built to augment the Lake CC water supply for the city of CC. It was never expected to stay at a full level for lengthy amounts of time, instead its sole purpose was to be a reservoir to store some of the water in the Nueces basin when it rained, and then that water could be periodically released into Lake CC. Without Choke, right now for example, all of the water coming down would flow into the Nueces, then into Lake CC and be let out into the bay since that lake is already full. With Choke, there is another place to capture and store it.

Also, when the Frio is dry for that long, it takes a significant amount of water to saturate the rock between the surface and the aquifers, so that the surface water can flow. That seems to have finally happened now, and the aquifers are still rising because it takes time for the water to seep from the surface, through the stone, into the actual aquifer.

Lastly, it takes time for the water to get from the Hill Country to the lake. Derby is about 60 miles upstream from Choke Canyon. The water is passing through there now. It is already out of the aquifer recharge zones, and will be at Choke in a couple days. Its not fracking, water stealing, aliens from Mars, or any of the other conspiracy theories previously mentioned. These are just the dynamics of the Choke Canyon watershed.

Hopefully, now that we are in a wet pattern, we will get more rains in that watershed, and the lake will fill because it will run down. This is exactly what happened in the mid 2000s when the lake filled after an extended down period.

Well what a freaking surprise! Frio in Tilden is starting to rise, Frio in Derby is still flowing good. San Miguel is running pretty good in Tilden and........... They are discharging water from the dam again! Why do I bother looking at these USGS graphs....

Not a lot; but still why????

I understand (but don't agree with) the scheduled releases from Lake CC, but why they'd be required to release water from Choke is beyond me.

And they just keep on letting it flow out the backside.

This drought hit south texas hard. Man I remember back in 2008, that was the magic year. Choke was full, everyone was happy. People were catching monster bass out of choke. I wish they would lock the dams down at Lake corpus and Choke. Lake corpus can be a awesome bass fishery. Unless Lake corpus gets below 50 percent they need to lock choke down. It sucks that my favorite tackle store in Three Rivers closed down a while back. I meet Orlando Wilson there on his way to mexico. Do you think Choke will ever get back to what it was, or are we stuck with this new choke. And I say that cause all my life I remember choke atleast 50 percent full.

Josh, it's a gov't agency, common sense does not apply.

Choke also serves as a catch basin to protect the town of Three rivers that is highly prone to flooding. The town actually sits below the flood zone and is surrounded by a levee to protect the town when the Atascosa and Nueces get out of their banks.
I'm sure the town gets nervous when Choke is full and you have hurricane season on the horizon.

http://twri.tamu.edu/newsletters/texaswaterresources/twr-v7n8.pdf

This area is prone to droughts, I do not understand why we do not stay under water restrictions all the time. Everyone freaks out cause our water supply is always low. We live in one of the dryest part of the state. We are known for not getting hurricanes. Not quite sure why that is but Corpus always seems to miss out of the well needed rains of a tropical storm.

This is going to be the norm as long as more people continue to move here.
It's going to be normal from now on and people just need to get used to it.
There has to be a tipping point and right now the demand is greater than the supply.

PEOPLE don't use that much water... but their manicured yards do. I would support a vote for no landscape watering.

i agree redchevy, I let mother nature detrimine when my yard is green, as long as i keep it mowed its all good.

I do not know the Choke Canyon water shed well but from my calculations it only received 3 inches of rainfall more than a "normal" year from January through November. I am not sure what it received in December but it looks like it is going to be another year or more before the recovery process starts.

That graph doesn't look promising....
Need a well placed hurricane this summer.
Hate to say that.

Now it's down to 33.3%.

23.56 low, gonna be another bad year.