Good Dam, Bad Dam?

[Greasy B]

I’m not talking about the high dams, I’m talking about what’s good and what’s bad about the many historic mill dams and not so historic lumps of concrete and the pestilent little mud holes that form behind
them. As anglers I would presume most of us have a love\hate relationship with
the low dams on the streams we fish, I know I do. Take Dawt Mill Dam in NFOW
and Tunnel Dam on Niangua River, both have a fairly profound effect on the
fisheries both above and below, no doubt many folks have opinions about them. I
look forward to hearing those opinions as well as comments on other low dams in
the Ozarks.

The dams that come to my mind are those in the Meramec and
Gasconade basins. The old mill dams on Bourbeuse and Big River seem relatively harmless
and may have done some good. On the Meramec the low dam that really gets my
goat is the bisecting little turd in the headwaters just upstream from Wesco. Who in the hell authorized
this? Can any landowner dam up a floatable creek to create their own swimming pool? The last time I portaged a full size canoe and three days of gear over it the thing it just about kicked my butt. Between this and the perpetual log jam downstream I’m telling you it’s not hardly worth the effort to make this float, even when the creek has enough water. I like this dam.

Of the two dams I can think of in the Gasconade basin, Big
Piney has the water intake at Fort Leonard Wood. It helps boat traffic down, I’d
rate it good. The other is one that gets me riled, it’s on the Woods Fork of
the Gasconade south of Hartville, just upstream from the junction with
Lick Fork and the beginning of the Gasconade proper. There had been a silted up
mill pond, now that’s buried below another pond form by a new dam just
downstream. I have to ask, is this good river management? I don’t know how long
the original mill pond took to silt up but isn’t this new pond doomed to the
same fate? Can lakes this small with such a large volume of water flowing
through them be viable fisheries? What did the citizens of Hartville and
Missouri get, a few decades of pastoral beauty, a marginal fishery followed by a
gargantuan mud hole that will last into perpetuity?

[tjulianc]

We have one on the upper Kings River that some land owner built just to get to his property, basically a driveway, but the county built a new high bridge bout a mile down river from his driveway dam. It is a bear to portage and it creates some bad hydraulics on the down side of it. I don't know what the legalities are of that, but I guess he got away with it.

I guess I am against any dams at all at this stage. Seems we've damed enough already, although I guess there might be a good reason for a small dam if it kept invasive species from moving into an area or something like that. It would need to be a very good reason to do it.

[gotmuddy]

I know for certain that everyone that fly fishes NFoW wants the dawt mill dam to be there for eternity. stripers decimate the trout population when they get above the dam.

[fishinwrench]

I know for certain that everyone that fly fishes NFoW wants the dawt mill dam to be there for eternity. stripers decimate the trout population when they get above the dam.

Except maybe those of us who like flyfishing for stripers.

[Gavin]

The drift boat guys would love to see McKee Bridge come down on the North Fork, but they dont want Dawt taken out...The stripers get in occassionally but not that often...

A friends family owns a mill dam on the Bourbuese. It kept the spotted bass at bay for a couple years but its just a barrier now. Think they would like to take it out...but that might cost alot of money.. Nature will take it out eventually..Low water slabs are a pain too...but the high bridge replacements are just as bad...Seems that MODOT never plans an easy way to the water when they replace a low bridge with a high one....one more potential access lost.

[gotmuddy]

The drift boat guys would love to see McKee Bridge come down on the North Fork, but they dont want Dawt taken out...The stripers get in occassionally but not that often...

I saw wayne swmo get hung up under mckee bridge. I guess they never intended something to go under the bridges when they built them.

[tjulianc]

but the high bridge replacements are just as bad...Seems that MODOT never plans an easy way to the water when they replace a low bridge with a high one....one more potential access lost.

The flip side of that is less or more difficult access means less fishing pressure and idiots on the river. I understand that we have to have some way to get to the river and we can't do 2 or 3 day trip every time we want to hit the river, but for the most part I think reducing accesses is a good thing.

[Greasy B]

It broke my heart when MDC built a new boat ramp above Morris Mill on Big River. I lost another quiet spot. A tough situation for anglers who seek solitude and a way to the water.

[cullinby9]

The dams on Finley Creek provide an oppurtunity to catch some big largemouth and smallmouth and keeps enough water to sustain a healthy population of bass. Portaging around them sucks but I'll glady do it to get to unpressured bass fishing. My friend caught this pig 2 years ago in march.

[Al Agnew]

As others have pointed out, there is usually both good and bad. Tunnel Dam probably keeps spotted bass from continually moving up the Niangua from Lake of the Ozarks and pushing out smallmouth. The mill dams on Big River and the Bourbeuse did keep spotted bass out for a while. Some dams provide pretty good fishing in the mill pond above, and a nice spot to fish just below...on lower Big River, the areas just below the mill dams are almost the only spots that still hold smallmouth, and the anglers in the know can go at certain times of the year and catch some walleye below them.

On the other hand, they are always barriers to easy fish migration, and for some species it would be better if they weren't there. And on rivers that push a lot of silt, a dam that's of a certain size can really trap a lot of silt and make the pond above one of Greasy's mudholes.

All in all, the rivers would almost certainly be healthier if the dams weren't there, and would eventually become healthier if they were removed. But some kinds of fishing would suffer. It's always a trade-off. We don't have the serious problems with migratory fish barriers like they do on the salmon rivers on the east and west coasts.