Water ‘scalping’ begins at Lake Fort Phantom Hill

ABILENE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC)- The City of Abilene began the process of pumping in water, or ‘scalping’, from the Clear Fork of the Brazos into Lake Fort Phantom Hill on Thursday afternoon. This comes just one day after the City had issued a statement that repairs were underway on the scalping pipeline, due to a failure when the process initially began on April 21st. With those repairs complete, local fishermen made their way out for a full day lakeside. Local Fisherman Gayland Kidd told KTAB/KRBC that he had to reevaluate which area he would cast in once he realized water was being pumped in.

“Oh I come out to do some Crappie fishing, and I noticed the pump was running, so I’m gonna change my tactics here a little bit…It’ll bring catfish in here, it’ll bring white bass, hybrid it’ll bring everything in here,” Kidd said.

During his interview with KTAB/KRBC, Kidd received a call from his fishing buddy who was waiting for him at the Lake Fort Phantom Hill boat dock, ready to cast a line as well, and they weren’t the only ones coming out to reel in some Crappie. Abilene Christian University Juniors Holt Wilkinson and Barrett Clark celebrating their last days of school with a trip to the lake.

“We just finished finals, so we gotta get out here and hope we can catch some Crappie. We were here yesterday, and the Crappie were spawning in about 4 feet of water…we had no idea they had started scalping from the Brazos…it’ll be interesting to see because we’re headed out just right next to where they’re scalping the water I’ll be interested to see if it changes the fishing or not,” Wilkinson and Clark said.

‘Scalping water’ is a process by which localities like Abilene can be allowed to use existing pump stations to bring excess water off of the Brazos to fill up local bodies of water. That process can only begin after the localities are given permission by the state, when the river has enough water to spare.

“Possum Kingdom is in good shape, they don’t need the water so I’m glad they’ll let us have it,” said Kidd.

Following the storms that have passed through the state in the past few days, the Brazos filled to an acceptable level to begin scalping.