JULY 2018 • NEBRASKAland 47
gleaned from the tagging study at
Spalding Dam could be invaluable.
O
Biologists aren't the only ones happy
with the results. Anglers are too. One
of them, B.J. Molt, was born and raised
in Spalding and operates the dam for
the village.
For all of his 37 years, he has only
known people to fish in the river below
the dam and in the channel below the
hydro plant. While they caught fish,
steep banks made access difficult for
most. The lake above the dam? "This
was the dead sea," Molt said. "We
didn't expect to catch any fish over
there."
"We never would have fished over
here," said Dave Bloom, another
Spalding resident.
Bloom, Molt and others occasionally
fish into the wee hours. Molt brings
his children, Jack, age 11, Lilly, 7
and Kinsley, 6, to the lake to fish
on evenings, with plenty of green
sunfish and crappies to entertain them.
Bloom's kids are among others from
town who fish the lake. Kayakers that
ply the waters now carry fishing poles.
And all the way up to Ericson Dam,
located 15 miles upriver as the crow
flies, 26 as the fish swims, anglers can
now wet a line and have a reasonable
expectation to catch a catfish.
Part of Molt's job is to maintain the
fishway, one he's happy to do. He and
other local anglers even assisted in
the tagging study by keeping fish they
caught on a weekend in a tank they
bought and mounted at the base of the
dam for Schainost to tag on Mondays.
That tagging study is what Molt
throws at the skeptics of the project.
"All you really have to do is mention
Steve's numbers and tell them that
79 percent of the catfish he tagged
went through," Molt said. "Isn't that
something?"
"I never would have thought in a
thousand years there would be that
many catfish around," Bloom said. ■
Water flows through the baffles in one of three chutes of a Denil fish bypass at
Spalding Dam. The baffles slow the flows to roughly 1 foot per second in the 13.5
percent slope of the chutes during normal operations.
