ND Outdoors: major improvement to Odland Dam in western North Dakota

SADDLE BUTTE, N.D. (KFYR) – Odland Dam is a 120-acre reservoir in western North Dakota. Mike Anderson takes us to this water body after the completion of a major improvement in this week’s segment of North Dakota Outdoors.

The North Dakota Game and Fish Department, along with the Golden Valley County Water Resource District, local landowners and a grant from the Outdoor Heritage Fund, helped make Odland Dam a better place for fishing and recreational boating.

“130,000 cubic yards of sediment were removed. That would be equal to 6,450 of them big off-road haul truckloads. Or 60 feet tall when stacked on a football field. 166 million gallons of water that they pumped out,” said Bud Ordahl, water resource district.

North Dakota Game and Fish Fisheries Biologist Jeff Merchant is hoping the sediment removal will help with fish management.

“The biggest management problem we’ve had are frequent winter kills. Odland is capable of growing some really nice fish, but when you have winter kills often it really hinders that. Another issue we’ve had in the past several years are the perch have become way too abundant out here. And so, this project is really giving us a chance to kind of reset the fishery and kind of start over,” said Merchant.

The project was important for the local community and surrounding areas because there aren’t a lot of water bodies in that part of the state for fishing and recreational boating.

“Been after it for years and years and years just because the community wanted it and over the years it just got where we couldn’t hardly boat out in it anymore. The weeds just were growing back too fast because of the shallow depths. And the fishery was getting in rough shape because of no depth also,” said Ordahl.

Water is already back in Odland Dam and Merchant and his crew stocked fish earlier this spring.

“Going forward this year we’ve already stocked adult bluegills in Odland, and we’re hopeful that they’ll reproduce. We’re also planning on stocking fingerling walleyes,” said Merchant.

It will take a couple of years for fish to grow to a catchable size, but people are already using it for recreational boating.

Odland Dam is north of Beach in western North Dakota.

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