Key points
- Live data: Environment Canada Real-Time Hydrometric — search "Goat", "Moyie", "Kootenay", "St. Mary" by name; pair with BC River Forecast Centre streamflow map .
- Runoff window: rivers unfishable before ~July 1; clear and fish through summer .
- Read the number in context, not raw: a discharge in cms means little on its own — what matters is whether it's high or low for today's date. Compare the live reading to the station's day-of-year normals (percentiles over the 1991–2020 record from HYDAT / MSC GeoMet
hydrometric-daily-mean); the BC RFC 7-day flow map classes stations this way at a glance . - Regulated reaches aren't weather: below a dam, flow is a release schedule set upstream, so a live gauge lags the decision. The lower Kootenay (below Lake Koocanusa / Libby Dam — USACE publishes outflow + forecasts; USGS 12301933 sits below the dam) and the Duncan River below Duncan Dam (into Kootenay Lake) are the local dam-controlled reaches — check the release, not just the gauge .
- Decision rule: high/murky → fish lakes (Horseshoe Lake, alpine); dropping/clear → rivers (Goat River, Moyie River).
- Build-out: the BC Freshwater Atlas-based data hub layers flows over the stream network for reach-level decisions (
kootenay-river-data-hub.html) .
Our gauges (WSC station IDs, resolved 2026-07-02)
| Water | Station | ID | Water temp? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kootenay River | at Fort Steele | 08NG065 | yes (param 5) |
| Elk River | at Fernie | 08NK002 | yes (param 5) |
| Bull River | near Wardner | 08NG002 | no |
| St. Mary River | below Morris Creek (upper river) | 08NG077 | no |
| Moyie River | above Noke Creek | 08NH139 | no |
| Goat River | no live gauge — proxy: Arrow Creek near Erickson | 08NH084 | no |
| Kootenay Lake | at Kuskonook (lake level only) | 08NH067 | no |
| Columbia River | at Birchbank (tailwater reach) | 08NE049 | yes (param 5) |
| Kootenay River (lower/Creston) | USGS: Kootenai at Porthill ID | 12322000 | yes (USGS 00010, CORS-open) |
- CSV endpoint (real-time datamart; the old
/hydrometric/path 404s since ~mid-2026):https://dd.weather.gc.ca/today/hydrometric/csv/BC/hourly/BC_<ID>_hourly_hydrometric.csv—.../daily/gives ~30 days. Data is provisional (QA flag 1). - Water temperature comes from a different service (dates required, no CORS — server-side only):
https://wateroffice.ec.gc.ca/services/real_time_data/csv/inline?stations[]=<ID>¶meters[]=5&start_date=…&end_date=…— hoot-owl watch threshold ≈ 20 °C afternoons; see . - Whether a discontinued Goat River gauge exists in the HYDAT archive is unresolved.
Related
- Goat River / Moyie River — flow-sensitive waters.
- Reading River Flows (Before You Go) feeds the river-vs-lake call alongside Chironomid Under Indicator backups.
- Thermal Thresholds by Species — why the 20 °C hoot-owl threshold sits where it does.
- What Makes a Fishery Healthy (Systems Model) — the same diagnostic at watershed scale rather than day scale.
