Lac St Anne Water Level

[elkhunter11]

I finally made it out to fill my walleye tags yesterday, and I was surprised to see the water level. I had heard that it was low, but I was not expecting that low. The water was down at least two feet, and we had to row a 14' boat out quite a ways to even lower the engine. And even then we hit bars over 100 yards from shore. We did finally get to our fishing spot, and found some fish, but it wasn't anything like last summer. Instead of a busy lake, we only saw two other small fishing boats on the water.
The locals claim that someone removed part of the weir last year to reduce flooding, and that is a huge factor, but that is just an unconfirmed rumor at this point, the only thing that is certain, is that the water is so low, that many people are not even using their boats now, because of the extremely low water levels.

[Justfishin73]

Was there last week, fishing was terrible. Toasted prop on a wave and rock. Won't be back any time soon.

[curtis_rak]

The lake is down about 16” inches - 2 feet based on last years water mark at the boat launches.

There is a lot of hullabaloo about the weir - personally I think it is only just one aggravating factor. The sturgeon river is pretty well the sole source of water for ste Anne - the sturgeon fills lake isle, then flows to ste Anne, and into devils lake and then out to the north sask. while the couple of missing boards on the weir might help a bit, the sturgeon river is nearly dry upstream between isle and ste Anne, and is also the same downstream.

Not enough snow last winter and a drought over the summer is probably more to blame (in my unprofessional opinion). I fish the lake a ton and the last two years had really high water levels because we had good snow in the winter and really wet. springs.

As for the fishing- I would disagree with the report. it’s been decent lately and the walleye will heat up now that it’s cooled off.


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[3blade]

Yep - been able to see the bottom of the sturgeon from the road, since May. Not really a surprise that any lake in the system is down.

Other years she’s up to the banks until July.

Some landowners have been blowing beaver dams as well, which will have an effect on water levels all the way up stream.

[Smokinyotes]

Just west of the bridge west of Darwell the beavers dammed the river off so there is no flow going to lac ste Anne. Even if the dam was removed it wouldn’t make much difference cause lake isle is very low as well.

As far the fishing, I know there was a pretty heavy die off this summer from the extreme heat.

[Big Grey Wolf]

Wabamun is still good water level inspite of no rain. TransAlta has to pump water from North Sask to keep level up. Sometimes good things come from having Industry near a lake even though they no longer use lake water.