Navajo Dam (San Juan River) is over 400 feet tall, and Yellowtail Dam (Bighorn) is over 500, while Harris Station is 'only' 175 feet, and Ripogenus a mere 92. Even if Maine dams like Harris Station were bottom release, I'm not sure if they would be tall enough to get the consistently cold flows of some of those western dams. Like many have said, we can't change weather but we can change the habitat of our rivers and ponds to give fish, bugs, wildlife a fighting chance.Īlthough I am not a civil engineer, I'm pretty sure we don't have bottom release dams here like those at the heads of some of the famous tailwater fisheries like the Bighorn and San Juan. So many questions about dams, but it's unfortunate that we have all of this water that gets artificially pumped with fish for a 3 or 4 months. I know that TU and other organizations are working piece by piece to take down some of the dams on smaller rivers (plus the one on the Penobscot), but it seems like such a crazy effort to even broach the subject with the state or the dam owners.

Do we have bottom release dams? Could we solve our issue of warm water temps by having bottom release dams? (although I think we should just blow them all up anyway, even though the 'boaters' will get angry) Even those places get too warm at some point (70 degree range). I have to assume that these are all top release dams? Then I think about big dams like Harris and Rip Dam that are constantly pushing high amounts of water for rafters.

It's no secret that many of our rivers get into the mid 70s by July 4th and stay that way until after Labor Day. These dams are all bottom release and temps rarely get above 70 degrees (I'm sure there are cases in drought or really hot temps where this isn't true), but it got me thinking about the dams we have in our state. I'm amazed at how some of the southern states (Arkansas, Tennessee) sustain near perfect fishing conditions throughout the year on their tailwater fisheries. As winter rolls around, I find myself looking at places to go fish while we all freeze until March.

Fish heads navajo dam