OXBOW – The beaches and boat docks at Brownlee Reservoir – located upstream of Brownlee Dam in Hells Canyon – are the perfect launch point for a drift boat, a cooler and a fishing rod in the summer.

The people who come here want high water, clean campgrounds where they can park RVs, and biting smallmouth bass, said recreation specialists with Idaho Power, which owns and operates campgrounds along the 58-mile reservoir.

They call them ”reservoir users,” a sharp contrast to the fly-fishing anglers who like to cast the lines on their fly rods above rapid, unrestrained rivers.

”The reservoir users like us to keep the reservoirs as high as we can,” said Dwayne Wood, recreation specialist with Idaho Power. ”The anadromous fish anglers are totally different.”

For years the reservoir revelers have enjoyed plenty of sun, water, fishing and water-skiing on Idaho Power’s reservoirs.

All that could change if environmental and tribal demands that Idaho Power alter its operations in order to improve water quality are successful, Wood said.

That’s because if power executives add fish passage, they will need to lower the reservoir levels in order to create more of a current to guide migrating fish to the dam, Wood said. From there, workers would load the fish into tanks in trucks and drive them around the three-dam complex.

”Fish passage and changing the water levels could potentially change the uses if they were successful,” Wood said. ”A lot of people would lose access. That scenario would drastically change what we have planned. People come here to camp and fish.”

But outfitters and anglers say Idaho Power should be working to lower water temperature upstream and downstream of the dams. They also want the utility company to run more water through the dams at a more frequent rate in order to keep the downstream Snake River flows from fluctuating.

”Right now the fish are confused,” said Curt Armacost, owner of Hells Canyon Raft, which has offered guided boating and fishing tours in Hells Canyon on the Snake River downstream of the dams. ”The water fluctuates so much that the fish don’t know what to do. Idaho Power is keeping stable waters in the reservoir to save money so they can make energy, and the downstream river is suffering.”