Sunday - September 4 The Permanent Catch & Release Area on the Little Missouri, at Riverside Park, contains a stretch we call the Skinny Water.

This area makes up nearly half of the Catch & Release Area but it doesn't really have much holding water for any fish at all.

The Skinny Water looking downstream >>>>

In addition there are large areas, several hundred square feet, of very shallow water over blank bed-rock that almost sits still in the summer sun allowing the water temperatures to climb into dangerous levels for trout.

On one summer afternoon I took readings in the slow moving areas and got temperatures to 75° while just 20 feet away, where the water was moving, the temperature was 67°! (This was before the #3 generator was back on line by the way.) That's a dramatic difference! And every bit of that warmer water has to blend with the cooler water which raises the overall temperatures as well as decreasing the dissolved oxygen content.

For some time I've been speculating about the possibility of modifying parts of this stretch to move the water through the zone faster and at the same time create some deeper potential pocket water habitat which could hold fish on a regular basis. Currently between the Closed Zone line and The Chute there are really only two places that would hold trout on low water.

One of the things that concerned me was how to keep the stretch as natural looking as possible and still get the desired effect. Rather than building wiers such that exist elsewhere on the Little Missouri I thought more along the lines of low level rip-rap "islands" that would sharpen the flows and cover the shallow areas. My hopes are that grasses will eventually be able to take hold on these islands and before long you'd have a hard time seeing that something was done at all!

The next step was to see if the project could happen at all!

Early in August 2005 I managed to get a date set to meet with Steve Filipek, AGFC Stream Team Director and Ned Hollenbach, Lake Greeson Project Manager for the Corps for Friday, September 2. That morning Steve, Ned and I were joined by Drew Wilson and Les Claybrook of the AGFC and Gary Lamers, Ned's right hand man with the Corps as well as our own Johnny McJunkins!

We wanted to take a look at what could be done, if there were any possible adverse effects to consider, if there was any potential opposition to consider and even if it is a worthwhile effort! Everyone seemed to think all all aspects were positive and that we could move to the next steps, which will be approval, logistics and funding.

Steve suggested a series of rip-rap triangles, "chevrons" and wedges located to "pinch" the flows with a funneling effect. There are natural bed-rock ridges to take advantage of and follow in those spots so we'd be kind of enhanceing the existing "lay of the land". With a little computer work I can give you an idea of how things possibly might look - before and afters so to speak:

The most upstream possibility - before on the left - after on the right. You can see, we're not talking about a huge amount of change, but strategic location more than anything else!

Steve even took the time with Johnny and I to take the measurements of the potentail areas to do his calculations as to what it was going to take to do the work.

One of the things to take care of is the applications by the AGFC and Corps for the "404 Clean Water Act". Steve will prepare a report/proposal and get it to the Corps and AGFC and we'll see where to go after that!

There is the slimmest chance that, if all is OK, this could happen even this year! I suspect next year would be more likely, but you never know. We'll keep you up on the progress as I get information!

Right now, I'd say it looks pretty good!