Duck River Reservoir (Cullman)

I meant to post this last week but forgot.

Anyways, they are creating a new reservoir in NE Cullman county damming up the Duck River. They just recently finished construction of the dam and plugged up the pipe running through the dam about a week before Christmas to allow it to begin to fill. I think full pool elevation is listed as 725 feet. In an article prior to the "Christmas Flood" it states that the elevation of the river bottom is 605 feet and that the water level at that point in time was at 627 feet. An article from Dec 29th stated that the water level had already risen to 715 feet, which is a rise of almost 90 feet and only 10 feet away from full pool. This all essentially happened over a 48 hour window which is pretty crazy. Due to it being so fast, unexpected and occurring on a holiday, the construction company lost a bunch (have heard about $1M worth) of equipment which now rests at the bottom near the dam. There were also still live power lines which became submerged that they had to kill and work on that weekend to re-route to restore power to a big area in the Holly Pond area. They were planning on doing this last week after Christmas.

I drove around the day after Christmas and took some pictures at the site where one concrete boat ramp had already been poured and from the other side of the lake at the trailhead to a walking/biking trail that is going to follow the bank. They aren't great but here are the ones I took.

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Here is link to a recent article on the lake where I got some of my info. http://www.cullmantimes.com/news/duc...f817cf611.html

Thanks for an interesting read. I am in the water business and enjoyed the story!

Kinda makes me wonder why the construction company would leave equipment in that area, knowing rain is coming. Of course no one knew how much rain, but you never know. I doesn't like they would have to move it very far.

Thanks for the pictures.

That's one way to fill a reservoir!! Hard to plan for historic rains, but it works

It definitely has sped up the rate at which it will become fishable. I think the original plan was to stock it next fall but now they now plan to advance it to this spring. I just regret never taking the time to gps some of the submerged bridges and brush piles they made while logging it.

That's what I was just thinking, sure would have liked to spend a day walking around with a GPS before it had water in it, LOL!

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Originally Posted by Ditch Basser

That's what I was just thinking, sure would have liked to spend a day walking around with a GPS before it had water in it, LOL!

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Yeah, I'm really regretting not doing that. There will definitely be an abundance of cover though. There was a lot left over from all of the logging. I'm also not sure how well fishing over main channel will be as this lake is going to have fairly steep contours and the submerged channel, bluffs, and bridges will be very deep, probably 80+ feet down.

This will also be a good lake to try the Humminbird Autolake software on which I plan to buy.

Is there going to be a engine size restriction like on Lake Catoma seems like a lake that size there would not be a need for one.

How many acres will it end up being when full?

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Originally Posted by slabby

Is there going to be a engine size restriction like on Lake Catoma seems like a lake that size there would not be a need for one.

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It's not official yet, but there have been several mentions that it will have a 10hp limit the same as Catoma has.

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Originally Posted by Blackhawk19

How many acres will it end up being when full?

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640 acres