For anglers, Nebraska is well known for its reservoir fishing. Lake McConaughy near Ogallala (30,000 acres when full), Lewis & Clark reservoir on the South Dakota border (30,000 acres when full), and Harland County Reservoir in south-central Nebraska (13,500 acres when full) are the largest reservoirs in the state. Smaller irrigation reservoirs in western and central Nebraska, and flood-control reservoirs in eastern Nebraska, also provide fishing opportunities, as do many farm ponds and sand pits across the state.

Several years of drought in Nebraska, and in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana that supply rivers like the Platte and Missouri, have left Nebraska reservoirs less than full, but most still provide excellent fishing. Catfish, largemouth and smallmouth bass, white bass, striped bass, northern pike, crappie, walleye, yellow perch, bluegill, sunfish, trout, carp -- depending on the reservoir, the variety of available fish can be staggering.

Nebraska rivers, creeks, and natural lakes also provide fun fishing, although they tend to be much less well known and less utilized in Nebraska. Nebraska’s prairie rivers historically supported a diverse population of fish, including northern pike, grass pickerel, several species of catfish, bass, buffalo fish, and eels as well as smaller darters, gizzard shad, minnows and dace. Paddlefish and sturgeon, both ancient fish families, still ply the Missouri.

Nebraska also boasts over 1,300 natural lakes, most of them in the Sandhills in north-central Nebraska, although many are surrounded by private land without regular public access. Those natural lakes host native fish, as well as native and non-native fish that have been stocked in their waters.

Challenges to Nebraska’s Fishable Waters

Unfortunately, Nebraska’s fisheries face major challenges. Continued water development, both in Nebraska and in upstream states, continues to deplete Nebraska streams. The flow in the 100-mile stretch of the Platte between North Platte and Lexington has been cut to just 10-15 percent of its historic level, as a result of municipal use, irrigation diversions and groundwater wells upstream. Streams like Pumpkin Creek in the Panhandle, and the Frenchman River in southwest Nebraska, have been dried up by irrigation wells, the farmers who hold surface water rights to their flows left high and dry.

Nearly every major river system in Nebraska is polluted, typically by some combination of runoff of sediment, nutrients, and pesticides from farm fields and feedlots, bacteria and ammonia from out-dated municipal treatment plants, and sediment from construction sites. Excessive sediment load in most Nebraska streams has driven out many native fish species.

Meandering streams have been straightened, braided rivers been channelized, streamside wetlands drained and urban streams armored with rock and concrete. The result: fast-moving water, down-cutting streams, degrading river banks, and destruction of fish habitat.

The Missouri River was once an enormously productive fishery, and supported hundreds of commercial fishermen well into the early-1900’s -- before huge dams upstream, and more than a century’s worth of work to straighten and channelize the river and remove snags caused fish populations and the commercial fishery to collapse.

Yet, there is hope. The federal Clean Water Act of 1972 promised to make America’s rivers fishable and swimmable again by 1985. We are still working to see that promise fulfilled, but Nebraska lags well behind other states in surface water monitoring and watershed cleanup.

In 1984, the Nebraska Legislature authorized the Game & Parks Commission and Nebraska Natural Resource Districts to apply for and hold ‘in-stream flow’ water rights, which would preserve what remains of natural river flows from future development. To date, only two Nebraska streams have in-stream flow protections, but the law has the potential to do far more good.

In 2004, Nebraska’s Legislature passed LB 962, the latest effort to modernize Nebraska’s outdated water laws. While not perfect, the new law should at least ‘slow the bleeding’ of stream flows in Nebraska, by slowing future development in watersheds where irrigation, industry, and municipal use has already appropriated available water rights.

Fish for the Future

The Nebraska Wildlife Federation continues 35 years of work to make sure that future generations of Nebraskans will be able to catch fish in Nebraska’s rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. For example:

With a seat on the Governor’s Water Policy Task Force, we are supporting laws that better protect stream flows needed for fish and recreation, and opposing new efforts to roll back Nebraska’s in-stream flow laws;

We are pushing our Department of Environmental Quality to improve its surface water monitoring and watershed cleanup program, and pushing our Governor and Legislature to boost much-needed funding for this important work;

In our Platte River Campaign, we helped represent conservation groups as we negotiated a basin-wide agreement with three states, the federal government, and water users, to protect remaining Platte River flows and begin to restore flows needed for fish and wildlife;

Our Adopt A Stream program trained over 200 Nebraskans in basic stream monitoring and conservation techniques, through a state-wide series of workshops;

We continue to support acquisition and development of areas that provide public access to Nebraska's public waters, for fishing, canoeing, boating and other recreation.

We invite you to join us in our work to make sure that future generations can enjoy Nebraska's water resources, by becoming a member of the Nebraska Wildlife Federation!