[env-trinity] Oh heck yeah:' As Trinity Lake fills up, fishing, boating already in full swing

[Tom Stokely]

https://www.redding.com/story/news/local/2024/05/02/oh-heck-yeah-at-85-full-trinity-lake-has-twice-the-water-as-2023/73517099007/

'Oh heck yeah:' As Trinity Lake fills up, fishing, boating already in full swing



 Damon ArthurRedding Record Searchlight


Trinity Lake was 85% full this week and that's just fine with Raine Harrison.

The Trinity Center resident, "who lives where people vacation," said that compared to the past few years, she is happy the water level in Trinity Lake is nearing the high water mark and is more accessible.

Last year at this time, Trinity Lake was less than 40% full, and getting down to the water for boating or fishing meant walking or driving a half a mile in some places to get to the water, Harrison said.



But not this year.

With the lake closer to full, businesses around Trinity Lake are expecting a much better tourist season, she said.

"Oh heck yeah. We're expecting lots of people to come up. We're already preparing for it," said Harrison, who is a cashier and assistant manager at Trinity Center General Store, up at the north end of the lake. "It's going to affect it a lot better, I believe ― more tourists. Already our fishing season's already in full swing. We've had quite a few fisher people," she said.

It isn't likely Trinity Lake will get much fuller than 85% this year, said Don Bader, area manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the water in Trinity Lake.

"The short answer is Trinity doesn't have the refill potential that Shasta Lake does. It's just a small basin. So we're actually very excited" that it's 85% full, Bader said. Meanwhile, Lake Shasta was 96% full, according to the California Department of Water Resources.

"Last year, Trinity was the only reservoir in California that didn't fill, even with all that winter rain we had. It's just a small basin, and it does not get the big storms, like the rest of the state gets in the wet years," he said.

Trinity Lake is fed by runoff from an area covering about 700 square miles, Bader said. The basin that feeds water into the lake is small compared to Lake Shasta, which collects rain and snowmelt from an area covering some 6,500 square miles, he said.

Two of the worst droughts on record for California ― 2013 to 2015 and 2020 to 2022 ― also hurt water storage at the lake, Bader said. The last year Trinity reached its historic average was in 2019, he said.
"We got two consecutive three-year droughts that were monumental and really impacted Trinity storage," Bader said.
Trinity Lake is one of the largest reservoirs in the state, as far as the potential volume of water it can store behind the dam. It can hold about 2.4 million acre-feet of water.

An acre-foot of water is about 326,000 gallons, or about the amount of water it takes to cover an acre of land — close to the size of a football field — one foot deep. Lake Shasta's capacity is about 4.5 million acre feet.

The biggest contributor of water into Lake Shasta is the runoff that flows into the Pit River, one of Lake Shasta's tributaries, Bader said. The watershed that feeds the Pit River extends all the way into southern Oregon east of Klamath Falls, he said.
"The Pit River is a monster and we get we get year-round inflows from the Pit River. In wet years like now, we get a lot of late spring and early summer inflows from the Pit River," he said.
While Trinity Lake relies mainly on snowmelt to fill, Lake Shasta is mainly fed with rainfall, he said. Contrary to what people may assume, the snow covering Mt. Shasta this spring will not melt and flow into Lake Shasta this summer, Bader said.

When the snow melts off Mt. Shasta it eventually flows into the Klamath River, not the Sacramento River, he said.

Regional hydrology aside, Darrell Marlin said he is just glad the Trinity Lake is filling up and the outlook for summer is better for business.

"There are plenty of areas for houseboating and fishing right now. We've got several fishing tournaments going on," said Marlin, who owns Trinity Alps Marinas.

Reporter Damon Arthur welcomes story tips at 530-338-8834, by email at damon.arthur at redding.com and on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @damonarthur_RS. Help local journalism thrive by subscribing today!








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