Nebraskaland

42 Nebraskaland • July 2023 bite picks up again. No matter the time of the year, Allen always fi shes from a sandbar or the bank, never wading out into the river. "Catfi sh are smart. If you disturb the water or make noise, they know something is up and they'll stop biting," he said. His favorite fi shing spot is a hole that formed below a chalk-rock ledge exposed in the river. "Before Spencer Dam went out, I could catch my fi ll of 5-pound catfi sh there," he said. "It was easy." The biggest cat Allen ever landed on rod and reel, an 8-pound fi sh, came from that hole. He has hooked bigger catfi sh, but fi ghting with the current, these fi sh usually break the line or straighten the hook and escape. From the rock-bottomed hole, he occasionally catches sauger, the river-inhabiting cousin of the walleye, but only when fi shing in September and when using nightcrawlers as bait. In addition to nightcrawlers, Allen sometimes baited his hook with chicken intestines, preferring them to chicken livers, a common catfi sh bait, saying "they have more stink." About 15 years ago, however, he switched to shad guts as his go-to catfi sh bait, and now buys them by the case in frozen pint jars. "The gizzard in the guts is really tough and when hooked through it, they stay on, and they really stink!" he said. "Fish can smell them from a long way downriver, and they really come after them." Allen usually fi shes alone. Until recently, a few times each summer, he enjoyed the companionship of two longtime friends with whom he would run setlines throughout the night and wearily clean their catch after sunrise. Both of these friends, however, passed away, and "getting up and down the river bank to check lines just got too hard on this old timer," Allen said. "I stopped running setlines." Allen's catfi shing had changed, and it was about to do so again in dramatic fashion. The Night Spencer Dam Burst On March 13, 2019, a rare bomb cyclone dropped more than two inches of rain over northeastern Nebraska, melting the foot of snow that covered the region. Unable to soak into the frozen soil, the water rushed down feeder streams into rivers throughout the region. The iced-covered Niobrara rose to historic levels, the river ice breaking free in chunks as large as pickups. The torrent of water and ice swept away highway bridges as if they were built of old barn siding, and then gathered behind Spencer Dam. In the early morning hours of March 14, the dam could bear no more, and the earthen bank breached in two spots, sending an 11-foot-high wall of mayhem cascading downstream. Allen and his second wife, Lana, were awakened by a phone call from his son, Cody, saying the dam had broken. Allen rushed outside and was startled to see water just 15 feet below their house. "When daylight came, I could see the mess we were in," he said. His fi rst concern was his cattle. The panicked animals were A 2017 aerial photo shows Spencer Dam looking westward. The dam's cement spillway is located on the right while its earthen bank extends to the left. Sand carried downstream by the Niobrara River has settled out of the still water and fi lled the former lake behind the dam. The clear water fl owing out of the dam carried little sand and was highly erosive, scouring deep holes in the river channel downstream. ERIC FOWLER, NEBRASKALAND

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